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FIELDS 

FACTORIES 

WORKSHOPS 


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^B    537    T57 


E  KROPOTSIN 


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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 


PRESENTED  BY 

PROF. CHARLES  A.  KOFOID  AND 

MRS.  PRUDENCE  W.  KOFOID 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/fieldsfactorieswOOkroprich 


Crown  8vo,  paper  boards,  i  /-  net ;  paper,  6d.  net. 

FIELDS,    FACTORIES    AND 
WORKSHOPS. 

By   p.    KROPOTKIN. 


PRESS  OPINIONS  ON  FIRST  EDITION, 

THE  TIMES:— "Seriously,  Prince  Kropotkin  has  a 
great  deal  to  say  for  his  theories.  ...  He  has  the 
genuine  scientific  temper,  and  nobody  can  say  that  he 
does  not  extend  his  observations  widely  enough,  for  he 
seems  to  have  been  everywhere  and  to  have  read  every- 
thing. .  .  .  Perhaps  his  chief  fault  is  that  he  does  not 
allow  sufficiently  for  the  ingrained  conservatism  of  human 
nature  and  for  the  tenacity  of  vested  interests.  But  that 
is  no  reason  why  people  should  not  read  his  book,  which 
will  certainly  set  them  thinking,  and  may  lead  a  few  of 
them  to  try,  by  practical  experiments,  to  lessen  some  of 
the  acknowledged  evils  of  the  present  industrial  system." 

THE  DAILY  NEWS:— "The  reader  who  may  be 
deterred  from  studying  this  volume  on  the  ground  that 
its  author  is  a  socialist,  will  miss  much  that  is  well  worth 
knowing.  .  .  .  We  recommend  our  readers  to  peruse 
Prince  Kropotkin's  survey  of  manufacturing  progress  in 
foreign  countries.  There  is  no  exaggeration  in  it,  it  is 
clear  and  concise,  and  just  the  kind  of  summary  for  those 
who  without  time  for  mastering  intricate  details  must  rest 
content  with  a  general  statement  of  the  world's  industrial 
movement.  .  .  .  But  most  interesting  of  all  is  the  de- 
scription of  the  wonderful  advance  now  being  made  in 
agricultural  methods.  .  :  .  The  book  is  a  most  valuable 
contribution  to  the  discussion  of  a  problem  of  national 
importance." 

SUNDAY  CHRONICLE :— "  A  stimulating  and  remark- 
able book." 


FIELDS,  FACTORIES  AND  WORKSHOPS 

— continued* 

WESTMINSTER  GAZETTE :—«  Prince  Kropotkin's 
new  book  is  an  admirable  example  of  its  author's  lucidity 
of  style  and  capacity  for  making  dry  statistical  and 
industrial  facts  vital  with  human  interest.  ...  In  his 
chapters  on  *  The  Possibilities  of  Agriculture  *  he  deals 
with  this  point  [the  possibility  of  crowded  industrial 
nations,  such  as  England,  becoming  self-supporting  in 
the  matter  of  food]  in  a  manner  that,  to  our  thinking,  is 
wholly  convincing.  ...  A  book  so  full  of  a  new  outlook 
in  social  economics,  and  at  the  same  time  so  forcible  in 
its  demonstration  of  fact." 

THE  ECHO : — "Taken  on  its  statistical  side  alone,  it 
is  a  storehouse  of  facts  to  which  the  social  student  will 
do  well  to  give  heed.  Taken  as  an  argument,  as  a  state- 
ment of  a  point  of  view  applicable  to  this  particular  stage 
in  the  progress  of  industry,  the  latest  book  of  the  distin- 
guished Russian  exile  is  full  of  stimulus  and  illuminating 
criticism.  .  .  .  No  more  earnest  and  stimulating  book 
has  come  our  way  for  many  months," 

DAILY  CHRONICLE:— "Kropotkin  is  on  strong 
grounds  when  he  assails  the  neglect  into  which  the  soil 
of  England  has  fallen.  .  .  .  To  those  who  are  weary  of 
the  common  interests  of  parties  and  Parliaments,  a  book 
like  this,  whether  one  agrees  with  it  or  not,  comes  like  a 
change  of  air  and  brings  a  wider  horizon." 

SAN  FRANCISCO  STAR  :— «  An  exceedingly  inter- 
esting, instructive,  thought-provoking  and  hope-inspiring 
book.  It  is  a  treasury  of  useful  knowledge  filled  with 
important  facts  gathered  from  a  wide  field  of  observation 
and  research.  No  one  can  read  the  book  without  having 
his  faith  in  the  beneficence  of  the  Power  that  orders  all 
things  deepened  and  strengthened/' 


FIELDS,    FACTORIES, 


AND 

WORKSHOPS 

OR 

INDUSTRY  COMBINED  WITH  AGRICULTURE 
AND  BRAIN  WORK  WITH  MANUAL  WORK 


P.    KROPOTKIN 


Illustrated  and  Unabridged 


FIFTH   LARGE  IMPRESSION  OF  THE  POPULAR  EDITION 


New  York:   G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

London  :    SWAN  SONNENSCHEIN  &  CO.,  Ltd 

1907 


PREFACE. 

Under  the  name  of  profits,  rent,  interest  upon 
capital,  surplus  value,  and  the  like,  economists 
have  eagerly  discussed  the  benefits  which  the 
owners  of  land  or  capital,  or  some  privileged 
nations,  can  derive,  either  from  the  under-paid 
work  of  the  wage-labourer,  or  from  the  inferior 
position  of  one  class  of  the  community  towards 
another  class,  or  from  the  inferior  economical 
development  of  one  nation  towards  another 
nation.  These  profits  being  shared  in  a  very 
unequal  proportion  between  the  different  indivi- 
duals, classes  and  nations  engaged  in  production, 
considerable  pains  were  taken  to  study  the 
present  apportionment  of  the  benefits,  and  its 
economical  and  moral  consequences,  as  well  as 
the  changes  in  the  present  economical  organisa- 
tion of  society  which  might  bring  about  a  more 
equitable  distribution  of  a  rapidly  accumulating 
wealth.  It  is  upon  questions  relating  to  the 
right  to  that  increment  of  wealth  that  the  hottest 
battles  are  now  fought  between  economists  of 
different  schoola 

Jn^  the  meantimejthe  great  question— ^ILWhat 
have    we    to    produce,    and    how  ? "    necessarily 

M3D9235 


/ 


IV  PREFACE. 

remained  in  the  background.  Political  economy, 
as  it  gradually  emerges  from  its  semi-scientific 
stage,  tends  more  and  more  to  become  a  science 
devoted  to  the  study  of  the  needs  of  men  and— 
of  the  means  for  satisfying  them  with  the  least 
possible  waste  of  energy,  that  is : — a  sort  of 
fc^  physiology  of  society.  But  few  economists,  as 
yet,  "Tiave  recognised  that  this  is  the  proper 
domain  of  economics,  and  have  attempted  to 
treat  their  science  from  this  point  of  view.  The 
main  subject  of  social  economy,  i.e.^  the  economy 
of^energy  required JorTlie  satisfaction  of  human 
needs yM  consequently  the  last  subject  which  one 
expects  to  find  treated  in  a  concrete  form  in 
economical  treatises. 

The  following  pages  are  a  contribution  to  a 
portion  of  this  vast  subject.  They  contain  a 
discussion  of  the  advantages  which  civilised 
societies  could  derive  from  a  ^combination  of 
)4  industrial  pursuits  with  intensive  agriculturej  and 
of  brain  work  with  manual  work. 

The   importance   of  such   a  combination  has 
not     escaped    the    attention    of    a    number    of 
students  of  social  science.       It   was  eagerly  dis- 
cussed )some  fifty  years  ago  under  the  names  of 
"  harmonised   labour,"   **  integral    education,"  and 
^      so   on.       It   was   pointed    out   at   that  time  that 
^      y    the.  greatest'   sum    total    of    well-being    can    be 
Z  \R^    obtained  when  a.  ^variety  of^agricultural,  industrial 
and    intellectual    pursuits   are_  combined    in    each 
community ;   and  that  man  shows  his  best  when 
he   is   in   a   position   to'^'apply  his  usually-varied 


VyA 


PREFACE.  V 

capacities  to  several  pursuits  in  the  farm,  the 
workshop,  the  factory,  the  study  or  the  studio, 
instead  of  being  riveted  for  life  to  one  of  these 
pursuits  only. 

At  a  much  more  recent  date,  in  the  seventies, 
Herbert  Spencer's  theory  of  evolution  gave 
origin  in  Russia  to  a  remarkable  work,  The 
Theory  of  Progress,  by  M.  M.  Mikhailovsky. 
The  part  which  belongs  in  progressive  evolution 
to  differentiation^  and  the  part  which  belongs  in 
it  to  an  integration  of  aptitudes  and  activities, 
were  discussed  by  the  Russian  author  with  depth 
of  thought,  and  Spencer's  differentiation-formula 
was  accordingly  completed. 

And,  finally,  out  of  a  number  of  smaller 
monographs^  I  must  mention  a  suggestive  little 
book  by  J^JR.  Dodge,  theJLInkejd^States^statis- 
tician  (Farm  and  Factory:  Aids  derived  by 
Agriculttire  from  Indusfrie^^  New  York,  t^^) 
The  same  question  was  discussed  in  it  from  a 
practical  American  point  of  view. 

Half  a  century  ago  a  harmonious  union  be- 
tween agricultural  and  industrial  pursuits,  as  also 
between  brain  work  and  manual  work,  could 
only  be  a  remote  desideratum.  Tlie_condkions. 
under  which  the  factory  system  asserted  itself, 
as  well  as  the  obsolete  forms  of  agriculture 
which  prevailed  at  that  time,  prevented  such  a 
union  from  being  feasible.  Synthetic  production 
was  impossible.  However,  the  wonderful  sim- 
plification of  the  technical  processes  in  both 
industry  and  agriculture,  partly  due.  to  an  ever- 


VI  l>REFACE. 

increasing  division  of  labour — in  analogy  with 
what  we  see  in  biology — has  rendered  the  syn- 
thesis possible  ;  and  a  distinct  tendency  towards  a 
synthesis  of  human  activities  becomes  now  apparent 
in  modern  economical  evolution.  This  tendency 
is  analysed  in  the  subsequent  chapters — a  special 
weight  being  laid  upon  the  present  possibilities 
of  agriculture,  which  are  illustrated  by  a  number 
of  examples  borrowed  from  different  countries, 
and  upon  the  small  industries  to  which  a  new 
impetus  is  being  given  by  the  new  methods  of 
transmission  of  motive  power. 

The  substance  of  these  essays  was  published 
in  1 888- 1 890  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  and  of 
one  of  them  in  the  Forum.  However,  the  ten- 
dencies indicated  therein  have  been  confirmed 
during  the  last  ten  years  by  such  a  mass  of 
evidence  that  a  very  considerable  amount  of  new 
matter  had  to  be  introduced,  while  the  chapters 
on  agriculture  and  the  small  trades  had  to  be 
written  anew. 

I  take  advantage  of  this  opportunity  to  ad- 
dress my  best  thanks  to  the  editors  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century  and  the  Forum  for  their  kind 
permission  of  reproducing  these  essays  in  a  new 
form,  as  also  to  those  friends  and  correspondents 
who  have  aided  me  in  collecting  information 
about  agriculture  and  the  petty  trades. 

P,  Kropotkin. 

Bromley,  Kent,  1898. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Preface i'i 

Chapter  I.  The  Decentralisation  OF  Industries      .        .        .        t 

Division  of  labour  and  integration — The  spread  of  industrial 
skill— Each  nation  its  own  producer  of  manufactured  goods 
— The  United  Kingdom  —  France  —  Germany  —  Russia  — 
"  German    Competition  ". 

Chapter  II.  The  Decentralisation  of  Industries  (continued)  .      22 

Italy  and  Spain — India— Japan — The  United  States — The  cotton, 
woollen  and  silk  trades — The  growing  necessity  for  each 
country  to  rely  upon  home-consumers. 

Chapter  III.  The  Possibilities  of  Agriculture        ...       40 

The  development  of  agriculture — The  over-population  prejudice 
— Can  the  soil  of  Great  Britain  feed  its  inhabitants  ? — 
British  agriculture — Compared  with  agriculture  in  France ; 
in  Belgium — Market  gardening  :  its  achievements — Is  it 
profitable  to  grow  wheat  in  Great  Britain  ? — American 
agriculture  :    intensive   culture   in   the   States. 

Chapter  IV.  The  Possibilities  of  Agriculture  (continued)       .      83 

The  doctrine  of  Malthus — Progress  in  wheat-growing — East 
Flanders-  Jersey — Potato  crops,  past  and  present — Irrigation 
— Major  Hallett's  experiments — Planted  wheat. 


Vlll  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Chapter  V.  The  Possibilities  of  Agriculture  {continued)        ,     104 

Extension  of  market  gardening  and  fruit  growing :  in  France ; 
in  the  United  States — Culture  under  glass — Kitchen  gardens 
under  glass — Hot-house  culture  :  in  Guernsey ;  in  Belgium 
— Conclusion. 


Chapter  VI.  Small  Industries  and  Industrial  Villages         .     126 

Industry  and  Agriculture — The  small  industries — Different  types 
— Petty  trades  in  Great  Britain :  Sheffield,  Leeds,  Lake 
District,  Birmingham — Petty  trades  in  France:  weaving 
and  various  others — The  Lyons  region — Paris,  emporium 
of  petty  trades. 


Chapter  VII.    Small   Industries  and   Industrial  Villages 

{continued) 162 

Petty  trades  in  Germany :  discussions  upon  the  subject  and 
conclusions  arrived  at  —  Petty  trades  in  Russia  —  Con- 
clusions. 


Chapter  VIII.  Brain  Work  and  Manual  Work  .        •        .        ,     i84 

Divorce  between  science  and  handicraft — Technical  education — 
Complete  education — The  Moscow  system ;  applied  at 
Chicago,  Boston,  Aberdeen — Concrete  teaching — Present 
waste  of  time — Science  and  technics — Advantages  which 
science  can  derive  from  a  combination  of  brain  work  with 
manual  work. 


Chapter  IX.  Conclusion 


APPENDIX. 

A.  French  Imports        •*....••.  221 

B.  Growth  of  Industry  in  Russia 221 

C.  Iron  Industry  in  Germany      •        • 222 

D.  Machinery  in  Germany 223 


CONTENTS.  IX 

PAOS 

E.  Cotton  Industry  in  Germany         ••••••  224 

F.  Mining  and  Textiles  in  Austria 225 

G.  Mr.  Giffen's  and   Mr.  Flux's   Figures   concerning  the 

Position    of    the    United    Kingdom    in   the   Inter- 
national  Trade 226 

H.  Cotton  Factories  IN  India     .        •        •        •        •        .        .  227 

I.  Irrigated  Meadows  in  Italy  .«••••.  229 

J.  The  Channel  Islands      .        .        • 230 

K.  Planted  Wheat  :  the  Rothamsted  Challenge    .        •        ,  236 

L.  Replanted  Wheat .  238 

M.  Imports  of  Vegetables  to  the  United  Kingdom          .        .  240 

N.  Market  Gardening  in  Belgium       ...••.  242 

O.  Petty  Trades  in  the  Lyons  Region       .        •        •        •        .  242 

P.  Small  Industries  in  Paris      .        •        .        t        t        •        .  247 

Q.  Petty  Trades  in  Germany       •«••••.  248 

Alphabetical  Index       ....«•         >        »        .  250 


CHAPTER    I. 

THE  DECENTRALISATION  OF  INDUSTRIES. 

Division  of  labour  and  integration — The  spread  of  industrial  skill — Each 
nation  its  own  producer  of  manufactured  goods — The  United  King- 
dom— France — Germany — Russia — "  German  competition  ". 

Who  does  not  remember  the  remarkable  chapter  by 
which  Adam  Smith  opens  his  inquiry  into  the  nature 
and  causes  of  the  wealth  of  nations  ?  Even  those  of 
our  contemporary  economists  who  seldom  revert  to 
the  works  of  the  father  of  political  economy,  and 
often  forget  the  ideas  which  inspired  them,  know 
that  chapter  almost  by  heart,  so  often  has  it  been 
copied  and  recopied  since.  It  has  become  an  article 
of  faith ;  and  the  economical  history  of  the  century 
which  has  elapsed  since  Adam  Smith  wrote  has  been, 
so  to  speak,  an  actual  commentary  upon  it 

"  Division  of  labour "  was  its  watchword.  And 
the  division  and  subdivision — the  permanent  subdivision 
— of  functions  has  been  pushed  so  far  as  to  divide 
humanity  into  castes  which  are  almost  as  firmly  estab- 
lished as  those  of  old  India.  We  have,  first,  the 
broad  division  into  producers  and  consumers:  little- 
consuming  producers  on  the  one  hand,  little-producing 
consumers  on  the  other  hand.  Then,  amidst  the 
former,  a  series  of  further  subdivisions:  the  manual 
worker  and  the  intellectual  worker,  sharply  separated 
from  one  another  to  the  detriment  of  both;  the  agri- 
cultural labourers  and  the  workers  in  the  manufacture ; 
and,   amidst  the   mass   of  the   latter,   numberless   sub- 

I 


2  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

divisions  again — so  minute,  indeed,  that  the  modern 
ideal  of  a  workman  seems  to  be  a  man  or  a  woman, 
or  even  a  girl  or  a  boy,  without  the  knowledge  of  any 
handicraft,  without  any  conception  whatever  of  the 
industry  he  or  she  is  employed  in,  who  is  only  capable 
of  making  all  day  long  and  for  a  whole  life  the  same 
infinitesimal  part  of  something:  who  from  the  age  of 
thirteen  to  that  of  sixty  pushes  the  coal  cart  at  a 
given  spot  of  the  mine  or  makes  the  spring  of  a  pen- 
knife or  "  the  eighteenth  part  of  a  pin ".  Mere  ser- 
vants to  some  machine  of  a  given  description;  mere 
flesh-and-bone  parts  of  some  immense  machinery ; 
having  no  idea  how  and  why  the  machinery  performs  its 
rhythmical  movements. 

Skilled  artisajiship  is  being  swept  away  as  a  sur- 
vival of  a  past  condemned  to  disappear.  For  the 
artist  who  formerly  found  aesthetic  enjoyment  in  the 
work  of  his  hands  is  substituted  the  human  slave  of  an 
iron  slave.  Nay,  even  the  agricultural  labourer,  who 
formerly  used  to  find  a  rehef  from  the  hardships  of  his 
life  in  the  home  of  his  ancestors — the  future  home  of 
his  children — in  his  love  of  the  field,  and  in  a  keen 
intercourse  with  nature,  even  he  has  been  doomed  to 
disappear  for  the  sake  of  division  of  labour.  He  is 
an  anachronism  we  are  told :  he  must  be  substituted, 
in  a  Bonanza  farm,  by  an  occasional  servant  hired  for 
the  summer,  and  discharged  as  the  autumn  comes: 
a  tramp  who  will  never  again  see  the  field  he  has 
harvested  once  in  his  life.  "  An  affair  of  a  few  years," 
the  economists  say,  "  to  reform  agriculture  in  accord- 
ance with  the  true  principles  of  division  of  labour  and 
modern  industrial  organisation." 

Dazzled  with  the  results  obtained  by  our  century 
of  marvellous  inventions,  especially  in  England,  our 
economists  and  political  men  went  still  farther  in 
their  dreams  of  division  of  labour.  They  proclaimed 
the  necessity  of  dividing  the  whole  of  humanity  into 


THE   DECENTRALISATION    OF    INDUSTRIES.  3 

national  workshops  having  each  of  them  its  own  speci- 
ality. We  were  taught,  for  instance,  that  Hungary 
and  Russia  are  predestined  by  nature  to  grow  corn 
in  order  to  feed  the  manufacturing  countries;  that 
Britain  had  to  provide  the  world-market  with  cottons, 
iron  goods  and  coal ;  Belgium  with  woollen  cloth ;  and 
so  on.  Nay,  within  each  nation,  each  region  had  to 
have  its  own  speciality.  So  it  has  been  for  some  time 
since ;  so  it  ought  to  remain.  Fortunes  have  been 
made  in  this  way,  and  will  continue  to  be  made  in  the 
same  way.  It  being  proclaimed  that  the  wealth  of 
nations  is  measured  by  the  amount  of  profits  made 
by  the  few,  and  that  the  largest  profits  are  made  by 
means  of  a  specialisation  of  labour,  the  question  was 
not  conceived  to  exist  as  to  whether  human  beings 
would  always  submit  to  such  a  specialisation ;  whether 
nations  could  be  specialised  like  isolated  workmen. 
The  theory  was  good  for  to-day — why  should  we  care 
for  to-morrow  ?  To-morrow  might  bring  its  own 
theory ! 

And  so  it  did.  The  narrow  conception  of  hfe  which 
consisted  in  thinking  that  projils  are  the  only  leading 
motive  of  human  society ;  and  the  stubborn  view  which 
supposes  that  what  has  existed  yesterday  would  last 
for  ever,  proved  in  disaccordance  with  the  tendencies 
of  human  life  ;  and  life  took  another  direction.  Nobody 
will  deny  the  high  pitch  of  production  which  may  be 
attained  by  specialisation.  But,  precisely  in  proportion 
as  the  work  required  from  the  individual  in  modern 
production  becomes  simpler  and  easier  to  be  learned, 
arid,  therefore,  also  more  monotonous  and  wearisome — 
the  requirements  of  the  individual  for  varying  his  work, 
for  exercising  all  his  capacities,  become  more  and  more 
prominent  Humanity  perceives  that  there  is  no  advan- 
tage for  the  community  in  riveting  a  human  being  for 
all  his  hfe  to  a  given  spot,  in  a  workshop  or  a  mine ; 
00  gaia  in  depriving  him  of  such  work  as  would  bring 


4  FIELDS,    FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

him  into  free  intercourse  with  nature,  make  of  him  a 
conscious  part  of  the  grand  whole,  a  partner  in  the 
highest  enjoyments  of  science  and  art,  of  free  work  and 
creation. 

Nations,  too,  refuse  to  be  speciaHsed.  Each  nation 
is  a  compound  aggregate  of  tastes  and  incHnations, 
of  wants  and  resources,  of  capacities  and  inventive 
powers.  The  territory  occupied  by  each  nation  is 
again  a  most  varied  texture  of  soils  and  climates,  of 
hills  and  valleys,  of  slopes  leading  to  a  still  greater 
variety  of  territories  and  races.  Variety  is  the  distinctive 
feature,  both  of  the  territory  and  its*  inhabitants ;  and 
that  variety  implies  a  variety  of  occupations.  Agri- 
culture calls  manufactures  into  existence,  and  manu- 
factures support  agriculture.  Both  are  inseparable ; 
and  the  combination,  the  integration  of  both,  brings 
about  the  grandest  results.  In  proportion  as  technical 
knowledge  becomes  eveiybody's  virtual  domain,  in  pro- 
portion as  it  becomes  international,  and  can  be  concealed 
no  longer,  each  nation  acquires  the  possibility  of  apply- 
ing the  whole  variety  of  her  energies  to  the  whole 
variety  of  industrial  and  agricultural  pursuits.  Know- 
ledge ignores  artificial  political  boundaries.  So  also 
do  the  industries  ;  and  the  present  tendency  of  humanity 
is  to  have  the  greatest  possible  variety  of  industries 
gathered  in  each  country,  in  each  separate  region,  side 
by  side  with  agriculture.  The  needs  of  human  ag- 
glomerations correspond  thus  to  the  needs  of  the 
individual  ;  andjvhile  a  temporary  division  of  functions 
remains  the  surest  guarantee  of  success  in  each  separate 
undertaking,  the  permanent  division  is  doomed  to  dis- 
appear, and  to  be  substituted  by  a  variety  of  pursuits — 
intellectual,  industrial,  and  agricultural — corresponding 
to  the  different  capacities  of  the  individual,  as  well  as  to 
the  variety  of  capacities  within  every  human  aggregate. 

When    we   thus   revert    from   the    scholastics    of   our 
t^t-books,   and   examine   human   life   as   a   whole,   we 


THE   DECENTRALISATION   OF   INDUSTRIES.  5 

soon  discover  tJiat,  while  all  the  benefits  of  a  tempo- 
rary division  of  labour  must  be  maintained,  it  is  high 
time  to  claim  those  of  the  integration  of  labour. 
Political  economy  has  hitherto  insisted  chiefly  upon 
division.  We  proclaim  integration ;  and  we  maintain 
that  the  ideal  of  society — that  is,  the  state  towards 
which  society  is  already  marching — is  a  society  of  in- 
tegrated labour;  a  society  where  each  individual  is  a 
producer  of  both  manual  and  intellectual  work ;  where 
each  able-bodied  human  being  is  a  worker,  and  where 
eadi  worker  works  both  in  the  field  and  the  industrial 
workshop ;  where  each  aggregation  of  individuals,  large 
^ough  to  dispose  of  a  certain  variety  of  natural  re- 
sources— it  may  be  a  nation,  or  rather  a  region — pro- 
duces and  itself  consumes  most  of  its  own  agricultural 
and  manufactured  produce. 

Of  course  as  long  as  society  remains  organised  so 
as  to  permit  the  owners  of  the  land  and  capital  to 
appropriate  for  themselves,  under  the  protection  of  the 
State  and  historical  rights,  the  yearly  surplus  of  human 
production,  no  such  change  can  be  thoroughly  accom- 
plished. But  the  present  industrial  system,  based  upon 
a  permanent  specialisation  of  functions,  already  bears 
in  itself  the  germs  of  its  proper  ruin.  The  industrial 
crises,  which  grow  more  acute  and  protracted,  and  are 
rendered  still  worse  and  still  more  acute  by  the  arma- 
ments and  wars  implied  by  the  present  system,  are 
rendering  its  maintenance  more  and  more  difficult. 
Moreover,  the  workers  plainly  manifest  their  intention 
to  support  no  longer  patiently  the  misery  occasioned  by 
each  crisis.  And  each  crisis  accelerates  the  day  when 
the  present  institutions  of  individual  property  and  pro- 
duction will  be  shaken  to  their  foundations  with  such 
internal  struggles  as  will  depend  upon  the  more  or  less 
good  sense  of  the  now  privileged  classes. 

But  we  maintain  also  that  any  Socialist  attempt  at 
remodelling  the  present  relations  between  Capital  and 


6  FIELi)S,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

Labour  will  be  a  failure,  if  it  does  not  take  into  account 
the  above  tendencies  towards  integpration.  Those  ten- 
dencies have  not  yet  received,  in  our  opinion,  due 
attention  from  the  different  Socialist  schools — but  they 
must.  A  reorganised  society  will  have  to  abandon  the 
fallacy  of  nations  specialised  for  the  production  of  either 
agricultural  or  manufactured  produce.  It  will  have  to 
rely  on  itself  for  the  production  of  food  and  many  if 
not  most  of  the  raw  materials ;  it  must  find  the  best 
means  of  combining  agriculture  with  manufacture — ^the 
work  in  the  field  with  a  decentralised  industry — and  it 
will  have  to  provide  for  "  integrated  education,"  which 
education  alone,  by  teaching  both  science  and  handi- 
craft from  earliest  cliildhood,  can  give  to  society  the  men 
and  women  it  really  needs. 

Each  nation  her  own  agriculturist  and  manufacturer ; 
each  individual  working  in  the  field  and  in  some  indus- 
trial art ;  each  individual  combining  scientific  knowledge 
with  the  knowledge  of  a  handicraft — such  is,  we  affirm, 
the  present  tendency  of  civilised  nations. 

The  prodigious  growth  of  industries  in  Great  Britain, 
and  the  simultaneous  development  of  the  international 
traffic  which  now  permits  the  transport  of  raw  materials 
and  articles  of  food  on  a  gigantic  scale,  have  created 
the  impression  that  a  few  nations  of  West  Europe  were 
destined  to  become  the  manufacturers  of  the  world. 
They  need  only — it  was  argued — to  supply  the  market 
with  manufactured  goods,  and  they  will  draw  from  all 
over  the  surface  of  the  earth  the  food  they  cannot  grow 
themselves,  as  well  as  the  raw  materials  they  need  for 
their  manufactures.  The  steadily  increasing  speed  of 
transoceanic  communications  and  the  steadily  increasing 
facilities  of  shipping  have  contributed  to  enforce  the 
above  impression.  If  we  take  the  enthusiastic  pictures 
of  international  traffic,  drawn  in  such  a  masterly  way 
by  Neumann  Spallart — the  statistician  and  almost  the 
poet  of  the  world-trade — ^we  are  inclined  indeed  to  fall 


THE   DECENTRALISATION    OF    INDUSTRIES.  7 

into  ecstasy  before  the  results  achieved  "  Why  shall 
we  grow  corn,  rear  oxen  and  sheep,  and  cultivate 
orchards,  go  through  the  painful  work  of  the  labourer 
and  the  farmer,  and  anxiously  watch  the  sky  in  fear  of 
a  bad  crop,  when  we  can  get,  with  much  less  pain,  moun- 
tains of  corn  from  India,  America,  Hungary,  or  Russia, 
meat  from  New  Zealand,  vegetables  from  the  Azores, 
apples  from  Canada,  grapes  from  Malaga,  and  so  on  ? " 
exclaim  the  West  Europeans.  "  Already  now,"  they  say, 
"  our  food  consists,  even  in  modest  households,  of  pro- 
duce gathered  from  all  over  the  globe.  Our  cloth  is 
made  out  of  fibres  grown  and  wool  sheared  in  all  parts 
of  the  world  The  prairies  of  America  and  Australia; 
the  mountains  and  steppes  of  Asia ;  the  frozen  wilder- 
nesses of  the  Arctic  regions ;  the  deserts  of  Africa  and 
the  depths  of  the  oceans ;  the  tropics  and  the  lands  of 
the  midnight  sun  are  our  tributaries.  All  races  of  men 
contribute  their  share  in  supplying  us  with  our  staple 
food  and  luxuries,  with  plain  clothing  and  fancy  dress, 
while  we  are  sending  them  in  exchange  the  produce 
of  our  higher  intelligence,  our  technical  knowledge,  our 
powerful  industrial  and  commercial  organising  capa- 
cities! Is  it  not  a  grand  sight,  this  busy  and  intricate 
exchange  of  produce  all  over  the  earth  which  has 
suddenly  grown  up  within  a  few  years  ? " 

Grand  it  may  be,  but  is  it  not  a  mere  nightmare  ?  Is 
it  necessary.?  At  what  cost  has  it  been  obtained,  and 
how  long  will  it  last  .** 

Let  us  turn  eighty  years  back.  France  lay  bleeding 
at  the  end  of  the  Napoleonic  wars.  Her  young  industry, 
which  had  begun  to  grow  by  the  end  of  the  last  century, 
was  crushed  down.  Germany,  Italy,  were  powerless  on 
the  industrial  field.  The  armies  of  the  great  Republic 
had  struck  a  mortal  blow  to  serfdom  on  the  Continent ; 
but  with  the  return  of  reaction  efforts  were  made  to 
revive  the  decaying  institution,  and  serfdom  meant  no 
industry  worth  speaking  of.     The  terrible  wars  between 


8  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND    WORKSHOPS. 

France  and  England,  which  wars  are  often  explained 
by  merely  political  causes,  had  a  much  deeper  meaning 
— an  economical  meaning.  They  were  wars  for  the 
supremacy  on  the  world  market,  wars  against  French 
commerce  and  industry — and  Britain  won  the  battle. 
She  became  supreme  on  the  seas.  Bordeaux  was  no 
more  a  rival  to  London,  and  the  French  industries 
seemed  to  be  killed  in  the  bud.  And,  favoured  by  the 
powerful  impulse  given  to  natural  sciences  and  tech- 
nology by  the  great  era  of  inventions,  finding  no  serious 
competitors  in  Europe,  Britain  began  to  develop  her 
manufactures.  To  produce  on  a  large  scale  in  immense 
quantities  became  the  watchword.  The  necessary  human 
forces  were  at  hand  in  the  peasantry,  partly  driven  by 
force  from  the  land,  partly  attracted  to  the  cities  by 
high  wages.  The  necessary  machinery  was  created,  and 
the  British  production  of  manufactured  goods  went  on 
at  a  gigantic  pace.  In  the  course  of  less  than  seventy 
years — from  1810  to  1878 — the  output  of  coal  grew 
from  10  to  133,000,000  tons;  the  imports  of  raw  ma- 
terials rose  from  30  to  380,000,000  tons ;  and  the  exports 
of  mamufactured  goods  from  46  to  200,000,000  pounds. 
The  tonnage  of  the  commercial  fleet  was  nearly  trebled 
Fifteen  thousand  miles  of  railways  were  built. 

It  is  useless  to  repeat  at  what  a  cost  the  above  results 
were  achieved.  The  terrible  revelations  of  the  parlia- 
mentary commissions  of  1840-42  as  to  the  atrocious  con- 
dition of  the  manufacturing  classes,  the  tales  of  "  cleared 
estates"  and  kidnapped  children  are  still  fresh  in  the 
memory.  They  will  remain  standing  monuments  for 
showing  by  what  means  the  great  industry  was  implanted 
in  this  country.  But  the  accumulation  of  wealth  in  the 
hands  of  the  privileged  classes  was  going  on  at  a  speed 
never  dreamed  of  before.  The  incredible  riches  which 
now  astonish  the  foreigner  in  the  private  houses  of 
England  were  accumulated  during  that  period ;  the 
exceedingly  expensive  standard  of  life  which  makes  a 


THE    DECENTRALISATION    OF    INDUSTRIES.  9 

person  considered  rich  on  the  Continent  appear  as  only 
of  modest  means  in  Britain  was  introduced  during  that 
time.  The  taxed  property  alone  doubled  during  the 
last  thirty  years  of  the  above  period,  while  during  the 
same  years  (i8io  to  1878)  no  less  than  ;^  1,112,000,000 
— nearly  ;^2,ooo,ooo,ooo  by  this  time — ^was  invested  by 
English  capitalists  either  in  foreign  industries  or  in 
foreign  loans. 

But  the  monopoly  of  industrial  production  could  not 
remain  with  England  for  ever.  Neither  industrial 
knowledge  nor  enterprise  could  be  kept  for  ever  as  a 
privilege  of  these  islands.  Necessarily,  fatally,  they 
began  to  cross  the  Channel  and  spread  over  the  Con- 
tinent The  Great  Revolution  had  created  in  France 
a  numerous  class  of  peasant-proprietors,  who  enjoyed 
nearly  half  a  century  of  a  comparative  well-being,  or, 
at  least,  of  a  guaranteed  labour.  The  ranks  of  homeless 
town  workers  increased  slowly.  But  the  middle-class 
revolution  of  1789- 1 793  had  already  made  a  distinction 
between  the  peasant  householders  and  the  village 
proleiaires,  and,  by  favouring  the  former  to  the  detri- 
ment of  the  latter,  it  compelled  the  labourers  who  had 
no  household  nor  land  to  abandon  their  villages,  and 
thus  to  form  the  first  nucleus  of  working  classes 
given  up  to  the  mercy  of  manufacturers.  Moreover, 
the  peasant-proprietors  themselves,  after  having  enjoyed 
a  period  of  undeniable  prosperity,  began  in  their  turn 
to  feel  the  pressure  of  bad  times,  and  were  compelled  to 
look  for  employment  in  manufactures.  Wars  and  re- 
volution had  checked  the  growth  of  industry;  but  it 
began  to  grow  again  during  the  second  half  of  our 
century ;  it  developed,  it  improved ;  and  now,  notwith- 
standing the  loss  of  Alsace,  France  is  no  longer  the 
tributary  to  England  for  manufactured  produce  which 
she  was  forty  years  ago.  To-day  her  exports  of  manu- 
factured goods  are  valued  at  nearly  one-half  of  those  of 
Great    Britain,   and   two-thirds   of   them   are   textiles ; 


10  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

while  her  imports  of  the  same  consist  chiefly  of  the  finer 
sorts  of  cotton  and  woollen  yarn — partly  re-exported 
as  stuffs — and  a  small  quantity  of  woollen  goods.  For 
her  own  consumption  France  shows  a  decided  tendency 
towards  becoming  entirely  a  self-supporting  country, 
and  for  the  sale  of  her  manufactured  goods  she  is  tend- 
ing to  rely,  not  on  her  colonies,  but  especially  on  her 
own  wealthy  home  market* 

Germany  follows  the  same  lines.  During  the  last 
twenty-five  years,  and  especially  since  the  last  war,  her 
industry  has  undergone  a  thorough  reorganisation. 
Her  machinery  has  been  thoroughly  improved,  and  her 
new-bom  manufactures  are  supplied  with  a  machinery 
which  mostly  represents  the  last  word  of  technical  pro- 
gress ;  she  has  plenty  of  workmen  and  technologists 
endowed  with  a  superior  technical  and  scientific  educa- 
tion ;  and  in  an  army  of  learned  chemists,  physicists  and 
engineers  her  industry  has  a  most  powerful  and  intelli- 
gent aid.  As  a  whole,  Germany  offers  now  the  spectacle 
of  a  nation  in  a  period  of  Aufschwung,  with  all  the 
forces  of  a  new  start  in  every  domain  of  life.  Thirty 
years  ago  she  was  a  customer  to  England.  Now  she  is 
already  a  competitor  in  the  markets  of  the  south  and 
east,  and  at  the  present  speedy  rate  of  growth  of  her 
industries  her  competition  will  be  soon  yet  more  acute 
than  it  is. 

The  wave  of  industrial  production,  zifter  having  had 
its  origin  in  the  north-west  of  Europe,  spreads  towards 
the  east  and  south-east,  always  covering  a  wider  circle. 
And,  in  proportion  as  it  advances  east,  and  penetrates 
into  younger  countries,  it  implants  there  all  the  improve- 
ments due  to  a  century  of  mechanical  and  chemical  in- 
ventions;  it  borrows  from  science  all  the  help  that 
science  can  give  to  industry;  and  it  finds  populations 
eager  to  grasp  the  last  results  of  modern  knowledge. 

*  See  Appendix  A. 


THE   DECENTRALISATION    OF   INDUSTRIES.  II 

The  new  manufactures  of  Germany  begin  where  Man- 
chester arrived  after  a  century  of  experiments  and  grop- 
ings ;  and  Russia  begins  where  Manchester  and  Saxony 
have  now  reached.  Russia,  in  her  turn,  tries  to  emanci- 
pate herself  from  her  dependency  upon  Western  Europe, 
and  rapidly  begins  to  manufacture  all  those  goods  she 
formerly  used  to  import,  either  from  Britain  or  from 
Germany. 

Protective  duties  may,  perhaps,  sometimes  help  the 
birth  of  new  industries ;  always  at  the  expense  of  some 
other  growing  industries,  and  always  checking  the  im- 
provement of  those  which  already  exist ;  but  the  decen- 
tralisation of  manufactures  goes  on  with  or  without 
protective  duties — I  should  even  say,  notwithstanding 
the  protective  duties.  Austria,  Hungary  and  Italy 
follow  the  same  lines — they  develop  their  home  in- 
dustries— and  even  Spain  and  Servia  are  going  to  join 
the  family  of  manufacturing  nations.  Nay,  even  India, 
even  Brazil  and  Mexico,  3upported  by  English  and 
German  capital  and  knowledge,  begin  to  start  home 
industries  on  their  respective  soils.  Finally,  a  terrible 
competitor  to  all  European  manufacturing  countries  has 
grown  up  of  late  in  the  United  States.  In  proportion 
as  technical  education  spreads  more  and  more  widely, 
manufactures  must  grow  in  the  States;  and  they  do 
grow  at  such  a  speed — an  American  speed — that  in  a 
very  few  years  the  now  neutral  markets  will  be  invaded 
by  American  goods. 

The  monopoly  of  the  first  comers  on  the  industrial 
field  has  ceased  to  exist  And  it  will  exist  no  more, 
whatever  may  be  the  spasmodic  efforts  made  to  return 
to  a  state  of  things  already  belonging  to  the  domain 
of  history.  New  ways,  new  issues  must  be  looked  for  ; 
the  past  has  lived,  and  it  will  live  no  more. 

Before  going  farther,  let  me  illustrate  the  march  of 
industries  towards  the  east  by  a  few  figures.     And,  to 


12  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND  WORKSHOPS. 

begin  with,  let  me  take  the  example  of  Russia.  Not 
because  I  know  it  better,  but  because  Russia  is  the 
latest  comer  on  the  industrial  field.  Forty  years  ago 
she  was  considered  as  the  ideal  of  an  agricultural  nation, 
doomed  by  nature  itself  to  supply  other  nations  with 
food,  and  to  draw  her  manufactured  goods  from  the 
west.  So  it  was,  indeed,  forty  years  ago — but  it  is  so 
no  more. 

In  1 86 1 — the  year  of  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs 
— Russia  and  Poland  had  only  14,060  manufactories, 
which  produced  every  year  the  value  of  296,000,000 
roubles  (about  ;^  3  6,000,000).  Twenty  years  later 
the  number  of  establishments  rose  to  35,160,  and  their 
yearly  production  became  nearly  four  times  the  above, 
i.e.,  1,305,000,000  roubles  (about  i^  13 1,000,000) ;  and 
in  1894,  although  the  census  left  the  smaller  manufac- 
tures and  all  the  industries  which  pay  excise  duties 
(sugar,  spirits,  matches)  out  of  account,  the  aggregate 
production  in  the  Empire  reached  already  1,759,000,000 
roubles,  i.e.,  ;^  1 80,000,000.  The  most  noteworthy 
feature  of  Russian  industry  is,  that  while  the  number 
of  workmen  employed  jn  the  manufactures  has  not 
even  doubled  since  1861  (it  attained  1,555,000  in  1894), 
the  production  per  workman  has  more  than  doubled : 
in  has  trebled  in  the  leading  industries.  The  average 
was  less  than  £yo  per  annum  in  1861  ;  it  reaches  now 
;^i63.  The  increase  of  production  is  thus  chiefly  due 
to  the  improvement  of  machinery. 

If  we  take,  however,  separate  branches,  and  especially 
the  textile  industries  and  the  machinery  works,  the 
progress  appears  still  more  striking.  Thus,  if  we  con- 
sider the  eighteen  years  which  preceded  1 879  (when  the 
import  duties  were  increased  by  nearly  30  per  cent,  and 
a  protective  policy  was  definitely  adopted),  we  find  that 
even  without  protective  duties  the  bulk  of  production 
in  cottons  increased  three  times,  while  the  number  of 
workers  employed  in  that  industry  rose  by  only  25  per 


THE   DECENTRALISATION    OF   INDUSTRIES.  1 3 

cent.  The  yearly  production  of  each  worker  had  thus 
grown  from  £4$  to  ;^II7.  During  the  next  nine  years 
(1880-89)  the  yearly  returns  were  more  than  doubled, 
attaining  the  respectable  figure  of  ;6^49,ooo,ooo  in  money 
and  3,200,000  cwts.  in  bulk ;  and  it  must  be  remarked 
that,  with  a  population  of  130,000,000  inhabitants,  the 
home  market  for  Russian  cottons  is  almost  unlimited ; 
while  some  cottons  are  also  exported  to  Persia  and 
Central  Asia.* 

True,  that  the  finest  sorts  of  yarn,  as  well  as  sew- 
ing cotton,  have  still  to  be  imported.  But  Lancashire 
manufacturers  will  soon  see  to  that;  they  now  plant 
their  mills  in  Russia.  Two  large  mills  for  spinning 
the  finest  sorts  of  cotton  yarn  were  opened  in  Russia 
last  year,  with  the  aid  of  English  capital  and  English 
engineers,  and  a  factory  for  making  thin  wire  for 
cotton-carding  has  lately  been  opened  at  Moscow  by 
a  well-known  Manchester  manufacturer.  Capital  is 
international  and,  protection  or  no  protection,  it  crosses 
the  frontiers. 

The  same  is  true  of  woollens.  In  this  branch  Russia 
is  relatively  backward.  However,  wool-combing,  spin- 
ning and  weaving  mills,  provided  with  the  best  modern 
plant,  are  built  every  year  in  Russia  and  Poland  by 
English,  German  and  Belgian  mill-owners;  so  that  last 
year  four-fifths  of  the  ordinary  wool,  and  as  much  of  the 
finer  sorts  obtainable  in  Russia,  were  combed  and  spun 
at  home — one  fifth  part  only  of  each  being  sent  abroad. 
The  times  when  Russia  was  known  as  an  exporter  of 
raw  wool  are  thus  irretrievably  gone.f 

*  The  yearly  imports  of  raw  cotton  attain  4,000,000  cwts. ;  out  of 
which  300,000  cwts.  from  Central  Asia  and  Transcaucasia.  These  last 
are  a  quite  recent  growth,  the  first  plantations  of  the  American  cotton 
tree  having  been  introduced  in  Turkestan  by  the  Russians,  as  well  as  the 
first  sorting  and  pressing  establishments.  The  relative  cheapness  of  the 
plain  cottons  in  Russia,  and  the  good  qualities  of  the  printed  cottons,  have 
attracted  the  attention  of  the  British  Commissioner  at  the  Nijni  Novgorod 
Exhibition  in  1897,  and  are  spoken  of  at  some  length  in  his  report. 

fThe  yearly  production  of  the  1085  woollen  mills  of  Russia  and 
Poland  was  valued  at  about  ^12.000,000  in  1894. 


14  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

In  machinery  works  no  comparison  can  even  be  made 
between  nowadays  and  1861,  or  even  1870;  the  whole 
of  that  industry  having  grown  up  within  the  last  fifteen 
years.  In  an  elaborate  report  Prof.  Kirpitcheff  points 
out  that  the  progress  realised  can  be  best  judged  by  the 
perfection  attained  in  Russia  in  building  the  best  steam 
engines  and  in  the  manufacture  of  water-pipes,  which 
fully  compete  with  Glasgow  work.  Thanks  to  English 
and  French  engineers  to  begin  with,  and  afterwards  to 
technical  progress  within  the  country  itself,  Russia  needs 
no  longer  to  import  any  part  of  her  railway  plant  And 
as  to  agricultural  machinery,  we  know,  from  several 
British  Consular  reports,  that  Russian  reapers  and 
ploughs  successfully  compete  with  the  same  implements 
of  both  American  and  English  make.  During  the  last 
eight  or  ten  years  this  branch  of  manufactures  has 
largely  developed  in  the  Southern  Urals  (as  a  village 
industry,  brought  into  existence  by  the  Krasnoufimsk 
Technical  School  of  the  local  District  Council,  or 
zemstvo),  and  especially  on  the  plains  sloping  towards 
the  Sea  of  Azov.  About  this  last  region  Vice-Consul 
Green  reported,  in  1894,  as  follows:  "Besides  some 
eight  or  ten  factories  of  importance,"  he  wrote,  "the 
whole  of  the  consular  district  is  now  studded  with  small 
engineering  works,  engaged  chiefly  in  the  manufacture 
of  agricultural  machines  and  implements,  most  of  them 
having  their  own  foundries.  .  .  .  The  town  of  Ber- 
dyansk," he  added,  "  can  now  boast  of  the  largest  reaper 
manufactory  in  Europe,  capable  of  turning  out  three 
thousand  machines  annually."  * 

•  Report  of  Vice-Consul  Green,  The  Economist,  gth  June,  1894  : 
'•  Reapers  of  a  special  type,  sold  at  £1$  to  £iT,  are  durable  and  go 
through  more  work  than  eitlaer  the  English  or  the  American  reapers". 
In  the  year  1893,  20,000  reaping  machines,  50,000  ploughs,  and  so  on, 
were  sold  in  that  district  only,  representing  a  value  of  £822,000.  Were 
it  not  for  the  simply  prohibitive  duties  imposed  upon  foreign  pig-iron 
(two  and  a  half  times  its  price  in  the  London  market),  this  industry  would 
have  taken  a  still  greater  development.  But  in  order  tQ  protect  the  home 
iron  industry — which  consequently  continues  to  cling  to  obsolete  fcnua 


1 


THE   DECENTRALISATION    OF    INDUSTRIES.  15 

Moreover  the  above  figures,  including  only  those 
manufactures  which  show  a  yearly  return  of  more  than 
;^200,  do  not  include  the  immense  variety  of  domestic 
trades  which  also  have  considerably  grown  of  late,  side 
by  side  with  the  manufactures.  The  domestic  indus- 
tries—  so  characteristic  of  Russia,  and  so  necessary 
under  her  climate — occupy  now  more  than  /, 500,000 
peasants,  and  their  aggregate  production  was  estimated 
a  few  years  ago  at  more  than  the  aggregate  production 
of  all  the  manufactures.  It  exceeded  i^  1 80,000,000  per 
annum.  I  shall  have  an  occasion  to  return  later  on  to 
this  subject,  so  that  I  shall  be  sober  of  figures,  and 
merely  say  that  even  in  the  chief  manufacturing  pro- 
vinces of  Russia  round  about  Moscow  domestic  weaving 
— ^for  the  trade — shows  a  yearly  return  of  ^^4, 500,000  ; 
and  that  even  in  Northern  Caucasia,  where  the  petty 
trades  are  of  a  recent  origin,  there  are,  in  the  peasants' 
houses  45,000  looms  showing  a  yearly  production   of 

;^20O,00O. 

As  to  the  mining  industries,  notwithstanding  over- 
protection,  and  notwithstanding  the  competition  of  fuel- 
wood  and  naphtha,*  the  output  of  the  coal  mines  of  the 
Don  has  doubled  during  the  last  ten  years,  and  in  Poland 
it  has  increased  fourfold.  Nearly  all  steel,  three-quarteis 
of  the  iron,  and  two-thirds  of  the  pig-iron  used  in 
Russia  are  home  produce,  and  the  eight  Russian  works 
for  the  manufacture  of  steel  rails  are  strong  enough  to 
throw  on  the  market  6,000,000  cwts.  of  rails  every  year.t 

It  is  no  wonder,  therefore,  that  the  imports  of  manu- 
factured goods  into  Russia  arc  so  insignificant,  and  that 


In  the  Urals— a  duty  of  6is.  a  ton  of  imported  pig-iron  is  levied.  The 
consequences  of  this  policy  for  Russian  agriculture,  railways  and  State's 
budget  have  lately  been  discussed  in  full  in  a  work  by  A.  A.  Radzig,  The 
Iron  Industry  of  the  World.     St.  Petersburg,  1896  (Russian). 

•  Out  of  the  1246  steamers  which  ply  on  Russian  rivers  one-quarter 
ire  heated  with  naphtha,  and  one-half  with  wood  •  wood  is  aJso  the  chief 
juel  of  the  railways  and  ironworks  in  the  Urals^ 

t  See  Appendix  B. 


l6  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

since  1870 — that  is,  nine  years  before  the  general  in- 
crease of  duties — the  proportion  of  manufactured  goods 
to  the  aggregate  imports  has  been  on  a  steady  decrease. 
Manufactured  goods  make  now  only  one-fifth  of  the  im- 
ports ;  and  while  the  imports  of  Britain  into  Russia 
were  valued  at  ii"  16,300,000  in  1872,  they  were  only 
;^6,884,500  in  1894.*  Out  of  them,  manufactured  goods 
were  valued  at  a  little  more  than  ;^2,ooo,ooo — the  re- 
mainder being  either  articles  of  food  or  raw  and  half- 
manufactured  goods  (metals,  yarn  and  so  on).  In  fact, 
the  imports  of  British  home  produce  have  declined  in  the 
course  of  ten  years  from  ;^8,8oo,ooo  to  ;^5,ooo,ooo,  so 
as  to  reduce  the  value  of  British  manufactured  goods 
imported  into  Russia  to  the  following  trifling  items : 
machinery,  ;^2,oo6,6oo ;  cottons  and  cotton  yam, 
£^395,570 ;  woollens  and  woollen  yarn,  ;^287,900 ;  and 
so  on.  But  the  depreciation  of  British  goods  imported 
into  Russia  is  still  more  striking.  Thus,  in  1876  Russia 
imported  8,000,000  cwts.  of  British  metals,  and  then 
paid  ;^6,ooo,ooo ;  but  in  1 884,  although  the  same  quan- 
tity was  imported,  the  amount  paid  was  only  ;6^3,400,ooo. 
And  the  same  depreciation  is  seen  for  all  imported  goods, 
although  not  always  in  the  same  proportion. 

It  would  be  a  gross  error  to  imagine  that  the  decline 
of  foreign  imports  is  mainly  due  to  high  protective 
duties.  The  decline  of  imports  is  much  better  explained 
by  the  growth  of  home  industries.  The  protective 
duties  have  no  doubt  contributed  (together  with  other 
causes)  towards  attracting  German  and  English  manu- 
facturers to  Poland  and  Russia.  Lodz^-the  Manchester 
of  Poland — is  quite  a  German  city,  and  the  Russian 
trade  directories  are  full  of  English  and  German  names. 
English  and  German  capitalists,  English  engineers  and 
foremen,  have  planted  within  Russia  the  improved  cotton 
manufactures  of  their  mother  countries ;   they  are  busy 

•£7,185,185  in  iSgQ 


THE  DECENTRALISATION   OF   INDUSTRIES.  1 7 

now  in  improving  the  woollen  industries  and  the  pro- 
duction of  machinery ;  while  Belgians  are  rapidly  im- 
proving the  iron  trades  in  South  Russia.  There  is  now 
not  the  slightest  doubt — and  this  opinion  is  shared,  not 
only  by  economists,  but  also  by  several  Russian  manu- 
facturers— that  a  free-trade  policy  would  not  check  the 
further  growth  of  industries  in  Russia.  It  would  only 
reduce  the  high  profits  of  those  manufacturers  who  do 
not  improve  their  factories  and  chiefly  rely  upon  cheap 
labour  and  long  hours. 

Moreover,  as  soon  as  Russia  succeeds  in  obtaining 
more  freedom,  a  further  growth  of  her  industries  will 
immediately  follow.  Technical  education  —  which, 
strange  to  say,  has  been  systematically  suppressed  until 
lately  by  the  Government — would  rapidly  grow  and 
spread ;  and  in  a  few  years,  with  her  natural  resources 
and  her  laborious  youth,  which  even  now  tries  to  com- 
bine workmanship  with  science,  Russia  would  soon  see 
her  industrial  powers  increase  tenfold.  She  farh  da  si 
in  the  industrial  field.  She  will  manufacture  all  she 
needs ;  and  yet  she  will  remain  an  agricultural  nation. 
At  present  only  1,000,000  of  men  and  women,  out  of 
80,000,000  population  of  European  Russia,  work  in 
manufactures,  and  7,500,000  combine  agriculture  with 
manufacturing.  This  figure  may  treble  without  Russia 
ceasing  to  be  an  agricultural  nation  ;  but  if  it  be  trebled, 
there  will  be  no  room  for  imported  manufactured  goods, 
because  an  agricultural  country  can  produce  them 
cheaper  than  those  countries  which  live  on  imported 
food 

The  same  is  still  more  true  with  regard  to  other 
European  nations,  much  more  advanced  in  their  indus- 
trial development,  and  especially  with  regard  to  Ger- 
many. So'  much  has  been  written  of  late  about  the 
competition  which  Germany  offers  to  British  trade,  even 
in  the  British   markets,   and  so   much   can   be   learned 

2 


l8  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

about  it  from  a  mere  inspection  of  the  London  shops, 
that  I  need  not  enter  into  lengthy  details.  Several 
articles  in  reviews ;  the  correspondence  exchanged  on 
the  subject  in  The  Daily  Telegraph  in  August,  1886; 
numerous  consular  reports,  regularly  summed  up  in  the 
leading  newspapers,  and  still  more  impressive  when 
consulted  in  originals ;  and,  finally,  political  speeches, 
have  familiarised  the  public  opinion  of  this  country 
with  the  importance  and  the  powers  of  German  com- 
petition* Moreover,  the  forces  which  German  industry 
borrows  from  the  technical  training  of  her  workmen, 
engineers  and  numerous  scientific  men,  have  been  so 
often  discussed  by  the  promoters  of  technical  educa- 
tion in  England  that  the  sudden  growth  of  Germany  as 
an  industrial  power  can  be  denied  no  more. 

Where  half  a  century  was  required  in  olden  times 
to  develop  an  industry  a  few  years  are  sufficient  now. 
In  the  year  1864  only  160,000  cwts.  of  raw  cotton 
were  imported  into  Germany,  and  only  16,000  cwts.  of 
cotton  goods  were  exported ;  cotton  spinning  and  weav- 
ing were  mostly  insignificant  home  industries.  Twenty 
years  later  the  imports  of  raw  cotton  were  already 
3,600,000  cwts.,  and  in  another  two  years  they  rose 
to  5,556,000  cwts.;  while  the  exports  of  cotton  stuffs- 
and  yarn  were  valued  at  ^^3,600,000  in  1883,  and 
i^7,662,ooo  in  1893.  A  great  industry  was  thus  created' 
in  less  than  thirty  years.  The  necessary  technical 
skill  was  developed,  and  at  the  present  time  Germany 
remains  tributary  to  Lancashire  for  the  finest  sorts  of 
yarn  only.  However,  Herr  Francke  believes  t  that 
even  this  disadvantage  will  soon  be  equalised  Very 
fine  spinning  mills  have  lately  been  erected,  and  the 

*  Many  facts  in  point  have  also  been  collected  lately  in  a  little  book,. 
Made  in  Germany,  by  E.  E.  Williams.  Unhappily,  the  facts  relative  to 
the  recent  industrial  development  of  Germany  are  so  often  used  in  a 
partisan  spirit  in  order  to  promote  protection  that  their  real  importance  is 
e'en  misunderstood. 

t  Die  neueste  Entwickelnng  der  Textil-Industrie  in  Deutschland. 


THE    DECENTRALISATION    01-    INDUSTRIES.  I9 

emajicipation  from  Liverpool,  by  means  of  a  cotton 
exchange  established  at  Bremen,  is  in  fair  progress.* 

In  the  woollen  trade  the  number  of  spindles  was 
rapidly  doubled,  and  in  1894  the  value  of  the  exports 
of  woollen  goods  attained  ;^8,220,3CX3,  out  of  which 
£go7fS^9  worth  were  sent  to  the  United  Kingdom.! 
The  flax  industry  has  grown  at  a  still  speedier  rate,  and 
as  regards  silks  Germany,  with  her  87,000  looms  and  a 
yearly  production  valued  at  ;^9,ooo,ooo,  is  second  only 
to  France. 

The  progress  realised  in  the  German  chemical  trade 
is  well  known,  and  it  is  only  too  badly  felt  in  Scotland 
and  Northumberland ;  while  the  reports  on  the  Ger- 
man iron  and  steel  industries  which  one  finds  in  the 
publications  of  the  Iron  and  Steel  Institute  and  in  the 
inquiry  which  was  made  by  the  British  Iron  Trade 
Association,  show  how  formidably  the  production  of  pig- 
iron  and  of  finished  iron  has  grown  in  Germany  for  the 
last  twenty  years.  (See  Appendix  C.)  No  wonder  that 
the  imports  of  iron  and  steel  into  Germany  were  reduced 
by  one-half  during  the  same  twenty  years  while  the 
exports  grew  nearly  four  times.  As  to  the  machinery 
works,  if  the  Germans  have  committed  the  error  of  too 
slavishly  copying  English  patterns,  instead  of  taking  a 
new  departure  and  of  creating  new  patterns,  as  the 
AmericcOis  did,  we  must  still  recognise  that  their  copies 
are  good  and  that  they  very  successfully  compete  in 
cheapness  with  the  tools  and  machinery  produced  in  this 
country.  (See  Appendix  D.)  I  hardly  need  mention 
the  superior  make  of  German  scientific  apparatus.  It 
is  well  known  to  scientific  men,  even  in  France. 

In  consequence  of  the  above,  all  imports  of  manu- 


*  Cf.  Schulze  Gawernit*,  Der  Grossbetrieh,  etc.     Sec  Appendix  E. 

t  The  imports  of  Gennan  woollen  stuffs  into  this  country  have  steadily 
grown  from  ;£"6o7,444  in  1890  to  £907,569  in  1894.  The  British  exports 
to  Germany  (of  stuffs  and  yarns)  were  valued  at  £2,769,392  in  1890  and 
£3,017,163  in  1894. 


20  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

factured  goods  into  Germany  are  in  decline.  The 
aggregate  imports  of  textiles  (inclusive  of  yarn)  stand  so 
low  as  to  be  compensated  by  nearly  equal  values  of 
exports.  And  there  is  no  doubt  that  not  only  the 
German  markets  for  textiles  will  be  soon  lost  for  other 
manufacturing  countries,  but  that  German  competition 
will  be  felt  stronger  and  stronger  both  in  the  neutral! 
markets  and  those  of  Western  Europe !  One  can  easily 
win  applause  from  uninformed  auditories  by  exclaiming 
with  more  or  less  pathos  that  German  produce  can 
never  equal  the  English!  The  fact  is  that  it  competes 
in  cheapness,  and  sometimes  also — ^where  it  is  needed — 
in  an  equally  good  workmanship  ;  and  this  circumstance 
is  due  to  many  causes. 

The  "  cheap  labour "  cause,  so  often  alluded  to  in 
discussions  about  "  German  competition "  which  take 
place  in  this  country  and  in  France,  must  be  dismissed 
by  this  time,  since  it  has  been  well  proved  by  so  many 
recent  investigations  that  low  wages  and  long  hours  do 
not  necessarily  mean  cheap  produce.  Cheap  labour 
and  protection  simply  mean  the  possibility  for  a  number 
of  employers  to  continue  working  with  obsolete  and 
bad  machinery ;  but  in  highly  developed  staple  indus- 
tries, such  as  the  cotton  and  the  iron  industries,  the 
cheapest  produce  is  obtained  with  high  wages,  short 
hours  and  the  best  machinery.  When  the  number  of 
operatives  which  is  required  for  each  looo  spindles  can 
vary  from  seventeen  (in  many  Russian  factories)  to 
three  (in  England),  no  reduction  of  wages  can  possibly 
compensate  for  that  immense  difference.  Consequently, 
in  the  best  German  cotton-mills  and  iron-works  the 
wages  of  the  worker  (we  know  it  directly  for  the  iron- 
works from  the  above-mentioned  inquiry  of  the  British 
Iron  Trade  Association)  are  not  lower  than  they  are  in 
Great  Britain.  All  that  can  be  said  is,  that  the  worker 
in  Germany  gets  more  for  his  wages  than  he  gets  in  this 
country — ^the    paradise   of   the    middleman — a   paradise 


THE    DECENTRALISATION    OF    INDUSTRIES.  21 

which  it  will  remain  so  long  as  it  lives  chiefly  on  im- 
ported food  produce. 

The  chief  reason  for  the  successes  of  Germany  in  the 
industrial  field  is  the  same  as  it  is  for  the  United  States. 
Both  countries  just  now  enter  the  industrial  phase  of 
their  development,  and  they  enter  it  with  all  the  energy 
of  youth  and  novelty.  Both  countries  enjoy  a  widely- 
spread  scientifically-technical  —  or,  at  least,  concrete 
scientific — education.  In  both  countries  manufactories 
are  built  according  to  the  newest  and  best  models  which 
have  been  worked  out  elsewhere;  and  both  countries 
are  in  a  period  of  awakening  in  all  branches  of  activity 
— literature  and  science,  industry  and  trade.  They  enter 
on  the  same  phase  in  which  Great  Britain  was  in  the  first 
half  of  this  century,  when  British  workers  invented  so 
much  of  the  wonderful  modern  machinery. 

We  have  simply  before  us  a  fact  of  the  consecutive 
development  of  nations.  And  instead  of  decrying  or 
opposing  it,  it  would  be  much  better  to  see  whether 
the  two  pioneers  of  the  great  industry — Britain  and 
France — cannot  take  a  new  initiative  and  do  something 
new  again ;  whether  an  issue  for  the  creative  genius  of 
these  two  nations  must  not  be  sought  for  in  a  new 
direction — namely,  the  utilisation  of  both  the  land  and 
the  industrial  powers  of  man  for  securing  well-being  to 
the  whole  nation  instead  of  to  the  few. 


CHAPTER   IL 

THE  DECENTRALISATION  OF  mDVSTRlES— {continued). 

Italy  and  Spain — India — Japan — The  United  States — The  cotton,  wool 
and  silk  trades — The  growing  necessity  for  each  country  to  rely 
chiefly  upon  home  consumers. 

The  flow  of  industrial  growths  spreads,  however,  not 
only  east ;  it  moves  also  south-east  and  south.  Austria 
and  Hungary  are  rapidly  gaining  ground  in  the  race  for 
industrial  importance.  The  Triple  Alliance  has  already 
been  menaced  by  the  growing  tendency  of  Austrian 
manufacturers  to  protect  themselves  against  German 
competition ;  and  even  the  dual  monarchy  has  recently 
seen  its  two  sister  nations  quarrelling  about  customs 
duties.  Austrian  industries  are  a  modern  growth,  and 
still  they  show  a  yearly  return  which  exceeds 
;^  1 00,000,000.  Bohemia,  in  a  few  decades,  has  grown 
to  be  an  industrial  country  of  considerable  importance ; 
and  the  excellence  and  originality  of  the  machinery  used 
in  the  newly  reformed  flour-mills  of  Hungary  show  that 
the  young  industry  of  Hungary  is  on  the  right  road,  not 
only  to  become  a  competitor  to  her  elder  sisters,  but 
also  to  add  her  share  to  our  knowledge  as  to  the  use  of 
the  forces  of  nature.  Let  me  add,  by  the  way,  that  the 
same  is  true  to  some  extent  with  regard  to  Finland. 
Figures  are  wanting  as  to  the  present  state  of  the  ag- 
gregate industries  of  Austria-Hungary ;  but  the  rela- 
tively low  imports  of  manufactured  goods  are  worthy  of 
note.  For  British  manufacturers  Austria-Hungary  is, 
in  'fact,  no  customer  worth  speaking  of ;   but  even  with 

(22) 


THE   DECENTRALISATION    OF   INDUSTRIES.  23 

regard  to  Germany  she  is  rapidly  emancipating  herself 
from  her  former  dependence.     (See  Appendix  F.) 

The  same  industrial  progress  extends  over  the 
southern  peninsulas.  Who  would  have  spoken  twenty 
years  ago  about  Italian  manufactures.?  And  yet — the 
Turin  Exhibition  of  1884  has  shown  it — Italy  ranks  now 
among  the  manufacturing  countries.  "  You  see  every- 
where a  considerable  industrial  and  commercial  effort 
made,"  wrote  a  French  economist  to  the  Temps. 
"  Italy  aspires  to  go  on  without  foreign  produce.  The 
patriotic  watchword  is,  Italy  all  by  herself!  It  inspires 
the  whole  mass  of  producers.  There  is  not  a  single 
manufacturer  or  tradesman,  who,  even  in  the  most 
trifling  circumstances,  does  not  do  his  best  to  emanci- 
pate himself  from  foreign  guardianship."  The  best 
French  and  English  patterns  are  imitated  and  improved 
by  a  touch  of  national  genius  and  artistic  traditions. 
Complete  statistics  are  wanting,  so  that  the  statistical 
Annuario  resorts  to  indirect  indications.  But  the  rapid 
increase  of  imports  of  coal  (9,000,000  tons  in  1896,  as 
against  779,000  tons  in  187 1)  ;  the  growth  of  the  mining 
industries,  which  have  trebled  their  production  during 
the  last  fifteen  years';  the  increasing  production  of  steel 
and  machinery  (nearly  ;^3,ooo,ooo  in  1886),  which — 
to  use  Bovio's  words — shows  how  a  country  having  no 
fuel  nor  minerals  of  her  own  can  have  nevertheless  a 
notable  metallurgical  industry ;  and,  finally,  the  growth 
of  textile  industries  disclosed  by  the  net  imports  of  raw 
cottons  and  the  number  of  spindles  having  nearly 
doubled  within  five  years  * — all  these  show  that  the 
tendency  towards  becoming  a  manufacturing  country 
capable  of  satisfying  her  needs  by  her  own  manufac- 
tures is  not  a  mere  dream.     As  to  the  efforts  made  for 

*  The  net  imports  of  raw  cotton  reached  291,680  quintals  in  1880,  and 
594,118  in  1885.  Number  of  spindles  1,800,000  in  1885,  as  against 
1,000,000  in  1877.  The  whole  industry  has  grown  up  since  1859.  Net 
imports  of  pig-iron  from  700,000  to  800,000  quintals  during  the  five  years 
i88x  to  1885. 


24  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND    WORKSHOPS. 

taking  a  more  lively  part  in  the  trade  of  the  world, 
who  does  not  know  the  traditional  capacities  of  the 
Italians  in  that  direction  ? 

I  ought  also  to  mention  Spain,  whose  textile,  mining 
and  metallurgical  industries  are  rapidly  growing ;  but 
I  hasten  to  go  over  to  countries  which  a  few  years  ago 
were  considered  as  eternal  and  obligatory  customers 
to  the  manufacturing  nations  of  Western  Europe.  Let 
us  take,  for  instance,  Brazil.  Was  it  not  doomed  by 
economists  to  grow  cotton,  to  export  it  in  a  raw  state, 
and  to  receive  cotton  goods  in  exchange  ?  Twenty 
years  ago  its  nine  miserable  manufactories  could  boast 
only  of  an  aggregate  of  385  spindles.  But  already  in 
1887  there  were  in  Brazil  46  cotton  manufactories,  and 
five  of  them  had  already  40,000  spindles;  while  alto- 
gether their  nearly  10,000  looms  threw  every  year  on 
the  Brazilian  markets  more  than  33,000,000  yards  of 
cotton  stuffs.  Nay,  even  Vera  Cruz,  in  Mexico,  under 
the  protection  of  customs  officers,  has  begun  to 
manufacture  cottons,  and  boasted  in  1887  its  40,200 
spindles,  287,700  pieces  of  cotton  cloth,  and  212,000  lb. 
of  yarn.  Since  that  year  progress  has  been  steady,  and 
in  1894  Vice-Consul  Chapman  reported  that  some  of 
the  finest  machines  are  to  be  found  at  the  Orizaba 
spinning  mills,  while  "  cotton  prints,"  he  wrote,  "  are 
now  turned  out  as  good  if  not  superior  to  the  imported 
article  ".* 

The  flattest  contradiction  to  the  export  theory  has, 
however,  been  given  by  India.  She  was  always  con- 
sidered as  the  surest  customer  for  British  cottons,  and 
so  she  has  been  until  now.  Out  of  the  total  of  cotton 
goods  exported  from  Britain  she  used  to  buy  more  than 
one-quarter,    very   nearly   one-third   (from   ;^  1 7,000,000 

*  The  Economist,  12th  May,  1894,  p.  g :  "A  few  years  ago  the  Orizaba 
mills  used  entirely  imported  raw  cotton ;  but  now  they  use  home-grown 
and  home-spun  cotton  as  much  as  possible  ". 


THE   DECENTRALISATION    OF   INDUSTRIES.  2$ 

to  ;^2  2,000,000,  out  of  an  aggregate  of  about 
i^75,ooo,ooo  in  the  last  decade,  and  from  ;^  16, 100,000 
to  ;^  1 8,242,000  during  the  years  1893  and  1894).  But 
things  have  begun  to  change.  The  Indian  cotton 
manufactures,  which — for  some  causes  not  fully  ex- 
plained— ^were  so  unsuccessful  at  their  beginnings,  sud- 
denly took  firm  root 

In  i860  they  consumed  only  23,000,000  lb.  of  raw 
cotton,  but  the  quantity  was  nearly  four  times  as  much 
in  1887,  and  it  trebled  again  within  the  next  ten  years: 
283,000,000  lb.  of  raw  cotton  were  used  in  1887-88. 
The  number  of  cotton  mills  grew  up  from  40  in  1877 
to  147  in  1895;  the  number  of  spindles  rose  from 
886,100  to  3,844,300  in  the  same  years;  and  where 
57,188  workers  were  employed  in  1887,  we  find,  seven 
years  later,  146,240  operatives;  while  the  capital  en- 
gaged in  cotton  mills  and  presses  by  joint-stock  com- 
panies rose  from  7,000,000  tens  of  rupees  in  1882  to 
14,600,000  in  1895.*  As  for  the  quality  of  the  mills,  the 
blue-books  praise  them ;  the  German  chambers  of  com- 
merce state  that  the  best  spinning  mills  in  Bombay  "  do 
not  now  stand  far  behind  the  best  German  ones  "  ;  and 
two  great  authorities  in  the  cotton  industry,  Mr.  James 
Piatt  and  Mr.  Henry  Lee,  agree  in  saying  "that  in  no 
other  country  of  the  earth  except  in  Lancashire  do  the 
operatives  possess  such  a  natural  leaning  to  the  textile 
industry  as  in  India  ".f 

The  exports  of  cotton  twist  from  India  more  than 
doubled  in  five  years  (1882- 1887),  and  already  in  1887 
we  could  read  in  the  Statement  (p.  62)  that  "  what 
cotton  twist  was  imported  was  less  and  less  of  the 
coarser  and  even  medium  kind,  which  indicates  that  the 
Indian  (spinning)  mills  are  gradually  gaining  hold  of 
the   home   markets ".     Consequently,   while   India  con- 


*  Ten  rupees  are,  as  is  known,  nearly  equal  to  £1  sterling, 
■t  Schulze  Gawernitz,  The  Cotton  Trade,  etc.,  p.  123. 


26  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

tinued  to  import  nearly  the  same  amount  of  British 
cotton  goods  (slightly  reduced  since),  she  threw  already 
then  (in  1887)  on  the  foreign  markets  no  less  than 
^3.635,510  worth  of  her  own  cottons  of  Lancashire 
patterns;  she  exported  33,000,000  yards  of  grey  cotton 
piece  goods  manufactured  in  India  with  Indian  work- 
men. And  the  export  has  continued  to  grow  since,  so 
that  in  the  years  1891-93,  73,000,000  to  80,000,000 
yards  of  cotton  piece  goods  were  exported,*  as  well  as 
from  161,000,000  to  189,000,000  lb.  of  yarn.  Finally, 
in  1897,  the  value  of  the  yams  and  textiles  exported 
reached  the  respectable  figure  of  14,073,600  tens  of 
rupees. 

The  jute  factories  in  India  have  grown  at  a  still 
speedier  rate,t  and  the  once  flourishing  jute  trade  of 
Dundee  was  brought  to  decay,  not  only  by  the  high 
tariffs  of  continental  powers,  but  also  by  Indian  com- 
petition. Even  woollen  mills  have  lately  been  started, 
while  the  iron  industry  took  a  sudden  development  in 
India,  since  the  means  were  found,  after  many  experi- 
ments and  failures,  to  work  furnaces  with  local  coal.  In 
a  few  years,  we  are  told  by  specialists,  India  will  be  self- 
supporting  for  iron.  Nay,  it  is  not  without  apprehen- 
sion that  the  EngHsh  manufacturers  see  that  the  imports 
of  Indian  manufactured  textiles  to  this  country  are 
steadily  growing,  while  in  the  markets  of  the  Far  East 
and  Africa  India  becomes  a  serious  competitor  to  the 
mother  country.  But  why  should  she  not.?  What 
might  prevent  the  growth  of  Indian  manufactures.?     Is 


*  312,000  bales  were  exported  to  China  and  Japan  in  1893,  instead  of 
1 12,100  bales  ten  years  before. 

t  In  1882  they  had  5633  looms  and  95,937  spindles.  Two  years  later 
(1884-85)  they  had  already  6926  looms  and  131,740  spindles,  giving  occu- 
pation to  51,900  persons.  Now,  or  rather  in  1895,  the  twenty-eight 
jute  mills  of  India  have  10,580  looms  and  216,140  spindles  (doubled  in 
twelve  years)  and  they  employ  a  daily  average  number  of  78,809  persons. 
The  progress  realised  in  the  machinery  is  best  seen  from  these  figures. 
The  exports  of  jute  stuffs  from  India  were  £1,543,870  in  1884-85  and 
£5,213,900  in  1895.     (See  Appendix  H.) 


THE  DECENTRALISATION   OF   INDUSTRIES.  27 

it  the  want  of  capital  ?  But  capital  knows  no  father- 
land ;  and  if  high  profits  can  be  derived  from  the  work 
of  Indian  coolies  whose  wages  are  only  one-half  of  those 
of  English  workmen,  or  even  less,  capital  will  migrate 
to  India,  as  it  has  gone  to  Russia,  although  its  migration 
may  mean  starvation  for  Lancashire  and  Dundee.  Is 
it  the  want  of  knowledge  ?  But  longitudes  and  latitudes 
are  no  obstacle  to  its  spreading ;  it  is  only  the  first  steps 
that  are  difficult  As  to  the  superiority  of  workmanship, 
nobody  who  knows  the  Hindoo  worker  will  doubt  about 
his  capacities.  Surely  they  are  not  below  those  of  the 
86,500  children  less  than  thirteen  years  of  age,  or  the 
363,000  boys  and  girls  less  than  eighteen  years  old,  who 
are  employed  in  the  British  textile  manufactories.* 

Ten  years  surely  are  not  much  in  the  life  of  nations. 
And  yet  within  the  last  ten  years  another  powerful 
competitor  has  gnrown  in  the  East  I  mean  Japan. 
In  October,  1888,  the  Textile  Recorder  mentioned  in 
a  few  lines  that  the  annual  production  of  yarns  in  the 
cotton  mills  of  Japan  had  attained  9,498,500  lb.,  and 
that  fifteen  more  mills,  which  would  hold  156,100 
spindles,  were  in  course  of  erection.!  Two  years  later, 
25,000,000  lb.  of  yam  were  spun  in  Japan;  and  while 
in  1886-88  Japan  imported  five  or  six  times  as  much 
yarn  from  abroad  as  was  spun  at  home,  next  year  two- 
thirds  only  of  the  total  consumption  of  the  country  were 
imported  from  abroad.  +     From  that  date  the  production 

*  The  number  of  boys  above  thirteen  but  under  eighteen,  working  full 
time,  was,  in  the  year  1890,  86,998..  The  number  of  girls  of  that  age  is 
not  given ;  they  are  considered  as  "  women,"  and  work  full  time.  But 
the  proportion  of  women  to  men  being  as  two  to  one  in  the  textile 
factories  of  the  United  Kingdom,  the  number  of  girls  of  that  age  (thirteen 
to  eighteen)  may  be  taken  as  twice  the  number  of  boys,  that  is,  about 
190,000.  This  would  give  a  total  of  at  least  363,000  boys  and  girls  less 
than  eighteen  years  of  age,  out  of  a  total  of  1,084,630  operatives  employed 
in  all  the  textile  trades  of  the  United  Kingdom.  More  than  one-third. 
{Statesman's  Year-hook  for  1898,  p.  75.) 

f  Textile  Recorder,  15th  October,  1888. 

X  17,778,000  kilogrammes  of  yarn  were  imported  in  1886  as  against 
2,919,000  kilogrammes  of  home-spun  yarn.  In  1889  the  figures  were: 
?5i687,ooo  kilogrammes  imported  and  12,160.000  kilogrammes  home-spun. 


28  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

grew  Up  regularly.  From  6,503,300  lb.  in  1886,  it 
reached  91,950,000  lb.  in  1893,  and  153,444,000  lb.  in 
1895.  In  nine  years  it  had  thus  increased  twenty-four 
times.  The  total  production  of  tissues,  valued  at 
;^i, 200,000  in  the  year  1887,  rapidly  rose  to  ;^i4,270,ooo 
in  1895 — cottons  entering  into  the  amount  to  the  extent 
of  nearly  two-fifths.  Consequently,  the  imports  of 
foreign  cotton  goods  from  Europe  fell  from  ;^  1,640,000 
in  1884  to  ;^849,6oo  in  1895,  while  the  exports  of  silk 
goods  rose  to  ^^3,246,000.  Moreover,  the  coal  and  iron 
industries  grow  so  rapidly  that  Japan  will  not  long 
remain  a  tributary  to  Europe  for  iron  goods ;  nay,  the 
ambition  of  the  Japanese  is  to  have  their  own  ship- 
building yards,  and  last  summer  300  engineers  left  the 
Elswick  works  of  Mr.  Armstrong  in  order  to  start  ship- 
building in  Japan.  But  they  were  engaged  for  five  years 
only.  In  five  years  the  Japanese  expect  to  have  learned 
enough  to  be  their  own  shipbuilders.*  As  to  such  plain 
things  as  matches,  the  industry,  after  its  failure  in  1884, 
has  risen  again,  and  in  1895  the  Japanese  exported  over 
15,000,000  gross  of  matches  valued  at  ;^  1,246,550. 

All  this  shows  that  the  much-dreaded  invasion  of 
the  East  upon  European  markets  is  in  rapid  progress. 
The  Chinese  slumber  still ;  but  I  am  firmly  persuaded 
from  what  I  saw  of  China,  that  the  moment  they  will 
begin  to  manufacture  with  the  aid  of  European  ma- 
chinery— and  the  first  steps  have  already  been  maxlc — 
they  will  do  it  with  more  success,  and  necesszirily  on  a 
far  greater  scale,  than  even  the  Japanese. 

But  what  about  the  United  States,  which  cannot  be 
accused  of  employing  cheap  labour  or  of  sending  to 
Europe    "  cheap    and    nasty "    produce  ^      Their    great 

*  The  mining  industry  has  grown  as  follows :  Copper  extracted :  2407 
tons  in  1875;  11,064  in  1887.  Coal:  567,200  tons  in  1875;  1,669,700 
twelve  years  later  ;  4,259,000  in  1894.  Iron  :  3447  tons  in  1875  ;  15,268 
in  1887  ;  over  20,000  in  1894.  (K.  Rathgen,  Japan's  Volkwirthschaft 
Hnd  Staatfhaushaltun^,  Leipzig,  1891  ;  Consular  Reports.^ 


THE  DECENTRALISATION    OF   INDUSTRIES.  29 

industry  is  of  yesterday's  date;  and  yet  the  States  al- 
ready send  to  old  Europe  constantly  increasing  quan- 
tities of  machinery,  while  this  year  they  began  even  to 
send  iron.  In  the  course  of  twenty  years  (1870-90) 
the  number  of  persons  employed  in  the  American 
manufactures  has  more  than  doubled,  and  the  value  of 
their  produce  has  nearly  trebled  *  The  cotton  industry, 
supplied  with  excellent  home-made  machinery,t  is 
rapidly  developing,  and  the  exports  of  cottons  of  do- 
mestic manufacture  attained  last  year  about  ;^2, 800,000. 
As  to  the  yearly  output  of  pig-iron  and  steel,  it  is  already 
in  excess  of  the  yearly  output  in  Britain,+  and  the 
organisation  of  that  industry  is  also  superior,  as  Mr. 
Berkley  pointed  out  in  November,  1891,  in  his  address 
to  the  Institute  of  Civil  Engineers. § 

But  all  this  has  grown  almost  entirely  within  the 
last  twenty  or  thirty  years — whole  industries  having  , 
been  created  entirely  since  i860.  H  What  will,  then, 
American  industry  be  twenty  years  hence,  aided  as  it 
is  by  a  wonderful  development  of  technical  skill,  by 
excellent  schools,  a  scientific  education  which  goes  hand 
in  hand  with  technical  education,  and  a  spirit  of  enter- 
prise which  is  unrivalled  in  Europe  ? 

Volumes  have  been  written  about  the  crisis  of  1886- 
87,  a  crisis  which,  to  use  the  words  of  the  Parliament- 
ary Commission,  lasted  since   1875,  ^i^h  but  "a  short" 


•Workers  employed  in  industries:  2,054,000  in  1870;  4,712,600  in 
1890.  Value  of  produce :  3,385,861,000  dollars  in  1870,  and  9,372,437,280 
dollars  in  1890.  Yearly  production  per  head  of  workers:  1648  dollars  in 
1870,  and  1989  dollars  in  1890. 

t  Textile  Recorder. 

X  It  was  from  7,255,076  to  9,811,620  tons  of  pig-iron  during  the  years 
1890-94;  4,051,260  tons  of  "Bessemer  and  Clapp-Griffiths  steel"  were 
obtained  in  1890. 

§  "  The  largest  output  of  one  blast-furnace  in  Great  Britain  does  not 
exceed  750  tons  in  the  week,  while  in  America  it  had  reached  2000  tons  " 
{Nature,  19th  Nov.,  1891,  p.  65). 

11  J.  R.  Dodge,  Farm  and  Factory:  Aids  to  Agriculture  from  other 
Industries,  New  York  and  London,  1884,  p.  iii.  I  can  but  highly 
'Tecommend  this  little  work  to  those  interested  in  the  question. 


30  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

period  of  prosperity  enjoyed  by  certain  branches  of 
trade  in  the  years  1880  to  1883/*  and  a  crisis,  I  shall 
add,  which  extended  over  all  the  chief  manufacturing 
countries  of  the  world  All  possible  causes  of  the  crisis 
have  been  examined;  but,  whatever  the  cacophony  of 
conclusions  arrived  at,  all  unanimously  agreed  upon  one, 
namely,  that  of  the  Parliamentary  Commission,  which 
could  be  summed  up  as  follows :  "  The  manufacturing 
countries  do  not  find  such  customers  as  would  enable 
them  to  realise  high  profits  ".  Profits  being  the  basis 
of  capitalist  industry,  low  profits  explain  all  ulterior 
consequences.  Low  profits  induce  the  employers  to 
reduce  the  wages,  or  the  number  of  workers,  or  the  num- 
ber of  days  of  employment  during  the  week,  or  eventu- 
ally compel  them  to  resort  to  the  manufacture  of  lower 
kinds  of  goods,  which,  as  a  rule,  are  paid  worse  than 
the  higher  sorts.  As  Adam  Smith  said,  low  profits 
ultimately  mean  a  reduction  of  wages,  and  low  wages 
mean  a  reduced  consumption  by  the  worker.  Low 
profits  mean  also  a  somewhat  reduced  consumption  by 
the  employer ;  and  both  together  mean  lower  profits 
and  reduced  consumption  with  that  immense  class  of 
middlemen  which  has  grown  up  in  manufacturing 
countries,  and  that,  again,  means  a  further  reduction  of 
profits  for  the  employers. 

A  country  which  manufactures  chiefly  for  export, 
and  therefore  lives  chiefly  on  the  profits  derived  from 
her  foreign  trade,  stands  very  much  in  the  same  posi- 
tion as  Switzerland,  which  lives  to  a  great  extent  on  the 
profits  derived  from  the  foreigners  who  visit  her  lakes 
and  glaciers.  A  good  "  season  "  means  an  influx  of  from 
;^ 1, 000,000  to  ;^2,ooo,ooo  of  money  imported  by  the 
tourists,  and  a  bad  "  season  "  has  the  effects  of  a  bad 
crop  in  an  agricultural  country :  a  general  impoverish- 
ment follows.  So  it  is  also  with  a  country  which  manu- 
factures for  export.  If  the  "  season "  is  bad,  and  the 
exported  goods  cannot  be  sold  abroad  for  twice  their 


THE   DECENTRALISATION    OF   INDUSTRIES.  3I 

value  at  home,  the  country  which  hves  chiefly  on  these 
bargains  suffers.  Low  profits  for  the  innkeepers  of 
the  Alps  mean  narrowed  circumstances  in  large  parts 
of  Switzerland ;  and  low  profits  for  the  Lancashire  and 
Scotch  manufacturers,  and  the  wholesale  exporters, 
mean  narrowed  circumstances  in  Great  Britain.  The 
cause  is  the  same  in  both  cases. 

For  many  decades  past  we  had  not  seen  such  a 
cheapness  of  wheat  and  majiufactured  goods  as  we  saw 
lately,  and  yet  the  country  was  suffering  from  a  crisis. 
People  said,  of  course,  that  the  cause  of  the  crisis  was 
over-production.  But  over-production  is  a  word  utterly 
devoid  of  sense  if  it  does  not  mean  that  those  who  are 
in  need  of  all  kinds  of  produce  have  not  the  means  for 
buying  them  with  their  low  wages.  Nobody  would 
dare  to  affirm  that  there  is  too  much  furniture  in  the 
crippled  cottages,  too  many  bedsteads  and  bedclothes 
in  the  workmen's  dwellings,  too  many  lamps  burning 
in  the  huts,  and  too  much  cloth  on  the  shoulders,  not 
only  of  those  who  used  to  sleep  (in  1886)  in  Trafalgar 
Square  between  two  newspapers,  but  even  in  those 
households  where  a  silk  hat  makes  a  part  of  the  Sunday 
dress.  And  nobody  will  dare  to  affirm  that  there  is  too 
much  food  in  the  homes  of  those  agricultural  labourers 
who  earn  twelve  shillings  a  week,  or  of  those  women 
who  earn  from  fivepence  to  sixpence  a  day  in  the  cloth- 
ing trade  and  other  small  industries  which  swarm  in  the 
outskirts  of  all  g^eat  cities.  Over-production  means 
merely  and  simply  a  want  of  purchasing  powers  amidst 
the  workers.  And  the  sajne  want  of  purchasing  powers 
of  the  workers  was  felt  everywhere  on  the  Continent 
during  the  years  1885-87. 

After  the  bad  years  were  over  a  sudden  revival  of 
international  trade  took  place ;  and,  as  the  British 
exports  rose  in  four  years  (1886  to  1890)  by  nearly  24 
per  cent.,  it  began  to  be  said  that  there  was  no  reason 
for  being   alarmed   by   foreign   competition ;    that   the 


32 


FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 


decline  of  exports  in  1885-87  was  only  temporary,  and 
general  in  Europe ;  and  that  England,  now  as  of  old, 
fully  maintained  her  dominant  position  in  the  inter- 
national trade.  It  is  certainly  true  that  if  we  consider 
exclusively  the  money  value  of  the  exports  for  the  years 
1876  to  1895,  we  see  no  permanent  decline,  we  notice 
only  fluctuations.  British  exports,  like  commerce  alto- 
gether, seem  to  show  a  certain  periodicity.  They  fell 
from  ;^20 1, 000,000  sterling  in  1876  to  ;^ 1 92,000,000  in 
1879 ;  then  they  rose  again  to  ;^24 1,000,000  in  1882,  and 
fell  down  to  ;^2 13,000,000  in  1886;  again  they  rose  to 
;6^2 64,000,000  in  1890,  but  fell  again,  reaching  a  mini- 
mum of  ;^2 1 6,000,000  in  1894,  to  be  followed  next  year 
by  a  slight  movement  upwards. 

This  periodicity  being  a  fact,  Mr.  GifFen  could  make 
light  of  "  German  competition  "  by  showing  that  exports 
from  the  United  Kingdom  had  not  decreased.  It  can 
even  be  said  that,  per  head  of  population,  they  have 
remained  what  they  were  twenty  years  ago,  notwith- 
standing all  fluctuations.*  However,  when  we  come  to 
consider  the  quantities  exported,  and  compare  them 
with  the  money  values  of  the  exports,  even  Mr.  Giffen 
must  acknowledge  that  the  prices  of  1883  were  so  low 
in  comparison  with  those  of  1873  that  in  order  to  reach 
the  same  money  value  the  United  Kingdom  would  have 
had  to  export  four  pieces  of  cotton  instead  of  three,  and 
eight  or  ten  tons  of  metallic  goods  instead  of  six.  "  The 
aggregate  of  British  foreign  trade,  if  valued  at  the 
prices  of  ten  years  previously,  would  have  amounted 

•  Per  head  of  population  they  appear,  in  shillings,  as  follows : — 


[876 
1877 
1878 
1879 
1880 
1881 
1882 
1883 
1884 
1885 


I2ZS. 

1886 

119s. 

1887 

114s. 

1888 

112s. 

1889 

129s. 

1890 

134s. 

T891 

137s. 

1892 

135s. 

1893 

130S. 

1894 

xi8s. 

1895 

117s, 

Z2ZS. 
127s. 
134s. 
I4IS. 
I3IS. 
119s. 
114s. 

ills. 

II2S. 


THE  DECENTRALISATION    OF   INDUSTRIES.  33 

to  ;6^86 1,000,000  instead  of  ;^667,ooo,ooo,"  we  were  told 
by  no  less  an  authority  than  the  Commission  on  Trade 
Depression. 

It  might,  however,  be  said  that  1873  was  an  ex- 
ceptional year,  owing  to  the  inflated  demand  which  took 
place  after  the  Franco-German  war.  But  the  same 
downward  movement  continues.  In  fact,  if  we  take  the 
figures  given  in  the  last  Statesman's  Year-book,  we  see 
that  while  the  United  Kingdom  exported,  in  1883, 
4,957,000,000  yards  of  piece  goods  (cotton,  woollen  and 
linen)  and  316,000,000  lb.  of  yarn  in  order  to  reach  an 
export  value  of  ii^  104, 5 00,000,  the  same  country  had 
to  export,  in  1895,  no  less  than  5,478,000,000  yards  of 
the  same  stuffs  and  330,000,000  lb.  of  yarn  in  order  to 
realise  ;^99, 700,000  only.  As  to  the  year  1894,  whicli 
was  a  minimum  year,  the  proportion  was  even  still 
worse.  And  it  would  appear  still  worse  again  if  we  took 
the  cottons  alone,  or  made  a  comparison  with  the  year 
i860,  when  2,776,000,000  yards  of  cotton  cloth  and 
197,000,000  lb.  of  cotton  yarn  were  valued  at 
;^5  2,000,000,  while  thirty-five  years  later  almost  twice 
as  many  miUion  yards  (5,033,000,000)  and  252,000,000 
lb.  of  yarn  were  required  to  make  up  ;^68,300,ooo.* 
And  we  must  not  forget  that  one-half  (in  value)  of 
British  and  Irish  exports  is  made  up  by  textiles. 

We  thus  see  that  while  the  total  value  of  the  exports 
from  the  United  Kingdom  remains,  broadly  speaking, 
unaltered  for  the  last  twenty  years,  the  high  prices 
which  could  be  got  for  these  exports  twenty  years  ago, 
and  with  them  the  high  profits,  are  irretrievably  gone. 
And  no  amount  of  arithmetical  calculations  will  persuade 
the  British  manufacturers  that  such  is  not  the  case. 
They  know  perfectly  well  that  the  home  markets  grow 
continually  overstocked ;  that  the  best  foreign  markets 
are  escaping;   and  that  in  the  neutral  markets  Britain 

*  Statesman's  Year-book,  1896,  p.  78.  :^-    ^^ 

3 


34  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

is  being  undersold.  This  is  the  unavoidable  conse- 
quence of  the  development  of  manufactures  all  over  the 
world.     (See  Appendix  G.) 

Great  hopes  are  now  laid  in  Australia  as  a  market 
for  British  goods ;  but  Australia  will  soon  do  what 
Canada  already  does.  She  will  manufacture.  And  the 
last  colonial  exhibition,  by  showing  to  the  "  colonists  " 
what  they  are  able  to  do,  and  how  they  must  do, 
will  only  have  accelerated  the  day  when  each  colony 
fara  da  se  in  her  turn.  Canada  and  India  already  im- 
pose protective  duties  on  British  goods.  As  to  the 
rauch-spoken-of  markets  on  the  Congo,  and  Mr.  Stanley's 
calculations  and  promises  of  a  trade  amounting  to 
;^26,ooo,ooo  a  year  if  the  Lancashire  people  supply  the 
Africans  with  loin-cloths,  such  promises  belong  to  the 
same  category  of  fancies'  as  the  famous  nightcaps  of  the 
Chinese  which  were  to  enrich  England  after  the 
Chinese  war.  The  Chinese  prefer  their  own  home-made 
nightcaps ;  and  as  to  the  Congo  people,  four  countries 
at  least  are  already  competing  for  supplying  them  with 
their  poor  dress :  Britain,  Germany,  the  United  States, 
and,  last  but  not  least,  India. 

There  was  a  time  when  this  country  had  almost  the 
monopoly  in  the  cotton  industries ;  but  about  1 880  she 
possessed  only  55  per  cent,  of  all  the  spindles  at  work 
in  Europe,  the  United  States  and  India  (40,000,000 
out  of  72,000,000),  and  a  little  more  than  one-half  of  the 
looms  (550,000  out  of  972,000).  In  1893  the  proportion 
was  still  further  reduced  to  41  per  cent  of  the  spindles 
(45,300,000  out  of  91,340,000).*  She  was  thus  losing 
ground  while  the  others  were  winning.  And  the  fact 
is  quite  natural :  it  might  have  been  foreseen.  There 
is  no  reason  why  Britain  should  always  be  the  great 
cotton  manufactory  of  the  world,  when  raw  cotton  has 
to  be  imported  into  this  country  as  elsewhere.     It  was 

*  The  Economist,  13th  January,  1894 


THE   DECENTRALISATION   OF   INDUSTRIES.  35 

quite  natural  that  France,  Germany,  Italy,  Russia,  India, 
Japan,  the  United  States,  and  even  Mexico  and  Brazil, 
should  begin  to  spin  their  own  yarns  and  to  weave  their 
own  cotton  stuffs.  But  the  appearance  of  the  cotton 
industry  in  a  country,  or  in  fact,  of  any  textile  in- 
dustry, unavoidably  becomes  the  starting-point  for  the 
growth  of  a  series  of  other  industries;  chemical  and 
mechanical  works,  metallurgy  and  mining  feel  at  once 
the  impetus  given  by  a  new  want  The  whole  of  the 
home  industries,  as  also  technical  education  altogether, 
must  improve  in  order  to  satisfy  that  want  as  soon  as 
it  has  been  felt 

What  has  happened  with  regard  to  cottons  is  going 
on  also  with  regard  to  other  industries.  Britain  and 
Belgium  have  no  longer  the  monopoly  of  the  woollen 
trade.  Immense  factories  at  Verviers  are  silent;  the 
Belgian  weavers  are  misery-stricken,  while  Germany 
yearly  increases  her  production  of  woollens,  and  exports 
nine  times  more  woollens  than  Belgium.  Austria  has 
her  own  woollens  and  exports  them;  Riga,  Lodz,  and 
Moscow  supply  Russia  with  fine  woollen  cloths ;  and 
the  growth  of  the  woollen  industry  in  each  of  the  last- 
named  countries  calls  into  existence  hundreds  of  con- 
nected trades. 

For  many  yeajs  France  has  had  the  monopoly  of 
the  silk  trade.  Silkworms  being  reared  in  Southern 
France,  it  was  quite  natural  that  Lyons  should  grow 
into  a  centre  for  the  manufacture  of  silks.  Spinning, 
domestic  weaving,  and  dyeing  works  developed  to  a 
great  extent  But  eventually  the  industry  took  such  a 
development  that  home  supphes  of  raw  silk  became 
insuflficient,  and  raw  silk  was  imported  from  Italy,  Spain 
and  Southern  Austria,  Asia  Minor,  the  Caucasus  and 
Japan,  to  the  amount  of  from  ;£"9,ooo,ooo  to  ;6^  11,000,000 
in  1875  and  1876,  while  France  had  only  ;^8oo,ooo  worth 
of  her  own  silk     Thousands  of  peasant  boys  and  girls 


36  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

were  attracted  by  high  wages  to  Lyons  and  the  neigh- 
bouring district;  the  industry  was  prosperous.  How- 
ever, by-and-by  new  centres  of  silk  trade  grew  up  at 
Basel  and  in  the  peasant  houses  around  Zurich.  French 
emigrants  imported  the  trade,  and  it  developed,  especi- 
ally after  the  civil  war  of  1871.  The  Caucasus 
Administration  invited  French  workmen  and  women 
from  Lyons  and  Marseilles  to  teach  the  Georgians  and 
the  Russians  the  best  means  of  rearing  the  silkworm, 
as  well  as  the  whole  of  the  silk  trade,  and  Stavropol 
became  a  new  centre  for  silk  weaving.  Austria  and  the 
United  States  did  the  same ;  and  what  are  now  the 
results?  During  the  years  1872  to  1881  Switzerland 
more  than  doubled  the  produce  of  her  silk  industry; 
Italy  and  Germany  increased  it  by  one-third;  and  the 
Lyons  region,  which  formerly  manufactured  to  the  value 
of  454,000,000  francs  a  year,  showed  in  1887  a  return 
of  only  378,000,000.  The  exports  of  Lyons  silks,  which 
reached  an  average  of  425,000,000  francs  in  1855-59, 
and  460,000,000  in  1870-74,  fell  down  to  233,000,000 
in  1887.  And  it  is  reckoned  by  French  specialists  that 
at  present  no  less  than  one-third  of  the  silk  stuffs  used 
in  France  are  imported  from  Zurich,  Crefeld,  and  Bar- 
men. Nay,  even  Italy,  which  had  2,000,000  spindles  and 
30,000  looms  in  1880  (as  against  14,000  in  1870),  sends 
her  silks  to  France  and  competes  with  Lyons.  The 
French  manufacturers  may  cry  as  loudly  as  they  like 
for  protection,  or  resort  to  the  production  of  cheaper 
goods  of  lower  quality;  they  may  sell  3,250,000  kilo- 
grammes of  silk  stuffs  at  the  same  price  as  they  sold 
2,500,000  in  1855-59 — they  will  never  again  regain  the 
position  they  occupied  before.  Italy,  Switzerland, 
Germany,  the  United  States  and  Russia  have  their  own 
silk  factories  and  will  import  from  Lyons  only  the 
highest  qualities  of  stuffs.  As  to  the  lower  sorts,  a 
foulard  has  become  a  common  attire  with  the  St 
Petersburg  housemaids,   because   the   North   Caucasian 


THE   DECENTRALISATION   OF   INDUSTRIES.  37 

domestic  trades  supply  them  at  a  price  which  would 
starve  the  Lyons  weavers.  The  trade  has  been  decen- 
tralised, and  while  Lyons  is  still  a  centre  for  the  higher 
artistic  silks,  it  will  never  be  again  the  chief  centre  for 
the  silk  trade  which  it  was  thirty  years  ago. 

Like  examples  could  be  produced  by  the  score. 
Greenock  no  longer  supplies  Russia  with  sugar,  because 
Russia  has  plenty  of  her  own  at  the  same  price  as  it 
sells  at  in  England.  The  watch  trade  is  no  more  a 
speciality  of  Switzerland :  watches  are  now  made 
everywhere.  India  extracts  from  her  ninety  collieries 
two-thirds  of  her  annual  consumption  of  coaL  The 
chemical  trade  which  grew  up  on  the  banks  of  the 
Clyde  and  Tyne  owing  to  the  special  advantages  offered 
for  the  import  of  Spanish  pyrites  and  the  agglomera- 
tion of  such  a  variety  of  industries  along  the  two  estu- 
aries is  now  in  decay.  Spain,  with  the  help  of  English 
capital,  is  beginning  to  utilise  her  own  pyrites  for 
herself ;  and  Germany  has  become  a  great  centre  for  the 
manufacture  of  sulphuric  acid  and  soda — ^nay,  she 
already  complains  about  over-production. 

But  enough!  I  have  before  me  so  many  figures, 
all  telling  the  same  tale,  that  examples  could  be  multi- 
plied at  will.  It  is  time  to  conclude,  and,  for  every 
imprejudiced  mind,  the  conclusion  is  self-evident 
Industries  of  all  kinds  decentralise  and  are  scattered 
all  over  the  globe ;  and  everywhere  a  variety,  an  inte- 
grated variety,  of  trades  grows,  instead  of  specialisa- 
tion. Such  are  the  prominent  features  of  the  times 
we  live  in.  Each  nation  becomes  in  its  turn  a  manu- 
facturing nation;  and  the  time  is  not  far  off  when 
each  nation  of  Europe,  as  well  as  the  United  States^ 
and  even  the  most  backward  nations  of  Asia  and 
America,  will  themselves  manufacture  nearly  every- 
thing they  are  in  need  of.  Wars  and  several  accidental 
causes  may  check  for  some  time  the  scattering  of  in- 


38  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

dustries :  they  will  not  stop  it ;  it  is  unavoidable.  For 
each  new-comer  the  first  steps  only  are  difficult.  But, 
as  soon  as  any  industry  has  taken  firm  root,  it  calls  into 
existence  hundreds  of  other  trades ;  and  as  soon  as  the 
first  steps  have  been  made,  and  the  first  obstacles  have 
been  overcome,  the  industrial  growth  goes  on  at  an 
accelerated  rate. 

The  fact  is  so  well  felt,  if  not  understood,  that  the 
race  for  colonies  has  become  the  distinctive  feature  of 
the  last  twenty  years.  Each  nation  will  have  her  own 
colonies.  But  colonies  will  not  help.  There  is  not 
a  second  India  in  the  world,  and  the  old  conditions 
will  be  repeated  no  more.  Nay,  some  of  the  British 
colonies  already  threaten  to  become  serious  competitors 
with  their  mother  country ;  others,  like  Australia,  will 
not  fail  to  follow  the  same  lines.  As  to  the  yet  neutral 
majkets,  China  will  never  be  a  serious  customer  to 
Europe :  she  can  produce  much  cheaper  at  home ;  and 
when  she  begins  to  feel  a  need  for  goods  of  European 
patterns  she  will  produce  them  herself.  Woe  to  Europe 
if  the  day  that  the  steam  engine  invades  China  she  is 
still  relying  on  foreign  customers!  As  to  the  African 
half-savages,  their  misery  is  no  foundation  for  the  well- 
being  of  a  civilised  nation. 

Progress  is  in  another  direction.  It  is  in  producing 
for  home  use.  The  customers  for  the  Lancashire  cot- 
tons and  the  Sheffield  cutlery,  the  Lyons  silks  and  the 
Hungarian  flour-mills,  are  not  in  India  nor  in  Africa. 
They  are  amidst  the  home  producers.  No  use  to  send 
floating  shops  to  New  Guinea  with  German  or  British 
millinery  when  there  are  plenty  of  would-be  customers 
for  British  millinery  in  these  very  islands,  and  for 
German  goods  in  Germany.  And,  instead  of  worrying 
our  brains  by  schemes  for  getting  customers  abroad, 
it  would  be  better  to  try  to  answer  the  following 
questions:  Why  the  British  worker,  whose  industrial 
capacities  are  so  highly  praised  in  political  speeches; 


THE   DECENTRALISATION    OF   INDUSTRIES.  39 

why  the  Scotch  crofter  and  the  Irish  peasant,  whose 
obstinate  labours  in  creating  new  productive  soil  out  of 
peat  bogs  are  occasionally  so  much  spoken  of,  are  no 
customers  to  the  Lancashire  weavers,  the  Sheffield 
cutlers  and  the  Northumbrian  and  Welsh  pitmen  ?  Why 
the  Lyons  weavers  not  only  do  not  wear  silks,  but 
sometimes  have  no  food  in  their  attics  ?  Why  the 
Russian  peasants  sell  their  corn,  and  for  four,  six,  and 
sometimes  eight  months  every  year  are  compelled  to 
mix  bark  and  auroch  grass  to  a  handful  of  flour  for 
baking  their  bread?  Why  famines  are  so  common 
amidst  the  growers  of  wheat  and  rice  in  India  ? 

Under  the  present  conditions  of  division  into  capi- 
talists and  labourers,  into  property-holders  and  masses 
living  on  uncertain  wages,  the  spreading  of  industries 
over  new  fields  is  accompanied  by  the  very  same  hor- 
rible facts  of  pitiless  oppression,  massacre  of  children, 
pauperism,  and  insecurity  of  life.  The  Russian  Fabrics 
Inspector's  Reports,  the  Reports  of  the  Plauen  Handels- 
kammer,  and  the  Italian  inquests  are  full  of  the  same 
revelations  as  the  Reports  of  the  Parliamentary  Com- 
missions of  1840  to  1842,  or  the  modern  revelations 
with  regard  to  the  "  sweating  system "  at  Whitechapel 
and  Glasgow,  and  London  pauperism.  The  Capital  and 
Labour  problem  is  thus  universalised ;  but,  at  the  same 
time,  it  is  also  simplified.  To  return  to  a  state  of 
affairs  where  com  is  grown,  and  manufactured  goods  are 
fabricated,  for  the  use  of  those  very  people  who  grow 
and  produce  them — such  will  be,  no  doubt,  the  problem 
to  be  solved  during  the  next  coming  years  of  European 
history.  Each  region  will  become  its  own  producer 
and  its  own  consumer  of  manufactured  goods.  But 
that  unavoidably  implies  that,  at  the  same  time,  it  will 
be  its  own  producer  and  consumer  of  agricultural  pro- 
duce ;  and  that  is  precisely  what  I  am  going  to  discuss 
next 


CHx\PTER  III. 

THE  POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE. 

The  development  of  agriculture — Over-population  prejudice — Can  the 
soil  of  Great  Britain  feed  its  inhabitants  ? — British  agriculture- 
Compared  with  agriculture  in  France ;  in  Belgium — Market  garden- 
ing :  its  achievements — Is  it  profitable  to  grow  wheat  in  Great 
Britain  ? — American  agriculture :  intensive  culture  in  the  States. 

The  industrial  and  commercial  history  of  the  world 
during  the  last  thirty  years  has  been  a  history  of  de- 
centralisation of  industry.  It  was  not  a  mere  shifting 
of  the  centre  of  gravity  of  commerce,  such  as  Europe 
has  witnessed  in  the  past,  when  the  commercial  hege- 
mony migrated  from  Italy  to  Spain,  to  Holland,  and 
finally  to  Britain :  it  had  a  much  deeper  meaning,  as 
it  excluded  the  very  possibility  of  commercial  or  indus- 
trial hegemony.  It  has  shown  the  growth  of  quite  new 
conditions,  and  new  conditions  require  new  adaptations. 
To  endeavour  to  revive  the  past  would  be  useless :  a  new 
departure  must  be  taken  by  civilised  nations. 

Of  course,  there  will  be  plenty  of  voices  to  argue 
that  the  former  supremacy  of  the  pioneers  must  be 
maintained  at  any  price :  all  pioneers  are  in  the  habit 
of  saying  so.  It  will  be  suggested  that  the  pioneers 
must  attain  such  a  superiority  of  technical  knowledge 
and  organisation  as  to  enable  them  to  beat  all  their 
younger  competitors;  that  force  must  be  resorted  to 
if  necessary.  But  force  is  reciprocal;  and  if  the  god 
of  war  always  sides  with  the  strongest  battalions,  those 
battalions   are   strongest   which   fight   for   new   rights 

(40) 


THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF   AGRICULTURE.  4 1 

against  outgrown  privileges.  As  to  the  honest  longing 
for  more  technical  education — surely  let  us  all  have  as 
much  of  it  as  possible :  it  will  be  a  boon  for  humanity ; 
for  humanity,  of  course — not  for  a  single  nation,  because 
knowledge  cannot  be  cultivated  for  home  use  only. 
Knowledge  and  invention,  boldness  of  thought  and 
enterprise,  conquests  of  genius  and  improvements  of 
social  organisation  have  become  international  growths ; 
and  no  kind  of  progress — intellectual,  industrial  or  social 
— can  be  kept  within  political  boundaries;  it  crosses 
the  seas,  it  pierces  the  mountains ;  steppes  are  no  ob- 
stacle to  it.  Knowledge  and  inventive  powers  are  now 
so  thoroughly  international  that  if  a  simple  newspaper 
paragraph  announces  to-morrow  that  the  problem  of 
storing  force,  of  printing  without  inking,  or  of  aerial 
navigation,  has  received  a  practical  solution  in  one 
country  of  the  world,  we  may  feel  sure  that  within  a  few 
weeks  the  same  problem  will  be  solved,  almost  in  the 
same  way,  by  several  inventors  of  different  nationalities. 
Continually  we  learn  that  the  same  scientific  discovery, 
or  technical  invention,  has  been  made  within  a  few  days' 
distance,  in  countries  a  thousand  miles  apart.;  as  if 
there  were  a  kind  of  atmosphere  which  favours  the  ger- 
mination of  a  given  idea  at  a  given  moment.  And  such 
an  atmosphere  exists:  steam,  print  and  the  common 
stock  of  knowledge  have  created  it. 

Those  who  dream  of  monopolising  technical  genius 
are  therefore  fifty  years  behind  the  times.  The  world 
— the  wide,  wide  world — is  now  the  true  domain  of 
knowledge ;  and  if  each  nation  displays  some  special 
capacities  in  some  special  branch,  the  various  capa- 
cities of  different  nations  compensate  one  another,  and 
the  advantages  which  could  be  derived  from  them  would 
be  only  temporary.  The  fine  British  workmanship  in 
mechanical  arts,  the  American  boldness  for  gigantic 
enterprise,  the  French  systematic  mind,  and  the  Ger- 
man pedagogy,  are   becoming  international  capacities 


42  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

Sir  William  Armstrong  in  his  Italian  and  Japanese 
workshops  communicates  to  Italians  and  Japanese  those 
capacities  for  managing  huge  iron  masses  which  have 
been  nurtured  on  the  Tyne ;  the  uproarious  American 
spirit  of  enterprise  pervades  the  Old  World ;  the  French 
taste  for  harmony  becomes  European  taste ;  and  Ger- 
man pedagogy — improved,  I  dare  say — is  at  home  in 
Russia.  So,  instead  of  trying  to  keep  Hfe  in  the  old 
channels,  it  would  be  better  to  see  what  the  new  condi- 
tions are,  what  duties  they  impose  on  our  generation. 

The  characters  of  the  new  conditions  are  plain,  and 
their  consequences  are  easy  to  understand.  As  the 
manufacturing  nations  of  West  Europe  are  meeting 
with  steadily  growing  difficulties  in  selling  their  manu- 
factured goods  abroad,  and  getting  food  in  exchange, 
they  will  be  compelled  to  grow  their  food  at  home ; 
they  will  be  bound  to  rely  on  home  customers  for  their 
manufactures,  and  on  home  producers  for  their  food. 
And  the  sooner  they  do  so  the  better. 

Two  great  objections  stand,  however,  in  the  way 
against  the  general  acceptance  of  such  conclusions.  We 
have  been  taught,  both  by  economists  and  politicians, 
that  the  territories  of  the  West  European  States  are  so 
overcrowded  with  inhabitants  that  they  cannot  grow 
all  the  food  and  raw  produce  which  aire  necessary  for 
the  maintenance  of  their  steadily  increasing  populations. 
Therefore  the  necessity  of  exporting  manufactured  goods 
and  of  importing  food.  And  we  are  told,  moreover, 
that  even  if  it  were  possible  to  grow  in  Western  Europe 
all  the  food  necessary  for  its  inhabitants,  there  would 
be  no  advantage  in  doing  so  as  long  as  the  same  food 
can  be  got  cheaper  from  abroad.  Such  are  the  present 
teachings  and  the  ideas  which  are  current  in  society  at 
large.  And  yet  it  is  easy  to  prove  that  both  are  totally 
erroneous :  plenty  of  food  could  be  grown  on  the  terri- 
tories of  Western  Europe  for  much  more  than  their 
present  populations,  and  an  immense  benefit  would  be 


.    THE   POSSiPiLITlES  OF  AGRICULTURE.  43 

derived  from  doing  so.     These  are  the  two  points  which 
I  have  now  to  discuss. 

To  begin  by  taking  the  most  disadvantageous  case : 
is  it  possible  that  the  soil  of  Great  Britain,  which  at 
present  yields  food  for  one-third  only  of  its  inhabit- 
ants, could  provide  all  the  necessary  amount  and 
variety  of  food  for  33,000,000  human  beings  when  it 
covers  only  56,000,000  acres  all  told — forests  and  rocks, 
marshes  and  peat-bogs,  cities,  railways  and  fields — out 
of  which  only  33,000,000  acres  are  considered  as  cultiv- 
able ?  *  The  current  opinion  is,  that  it  by  no  means 
can ;  and  that  opinion  is  so  inveterate  that  we  even  see 
men  of  science,  who  are  generally  cautious  when  dealing 
with  current  opinions,  endorse  that  opinion  without  even 
taking  the  trouble  of  verifying  it  It  is  accepted  as  an 
axiom.  And  yet,  as  soon  as  we  try  to  find  out  any 
argument  in  its  favour,  we  discover  that  it  has  not  the 
slightest  foundation,  either  in  facts  or  in  judgment  upon 
well-known  facts. 

Let  us  take,  for  instance,  J.  B.  Lawes'  estimates  of 
crops  which  are  published  every  year  in  The  Times. 
In  his  estimate  of  the  year  1887  he  made  the  remark 
that  during  the  eight  harvest  years  1853- 1860  "nearly 
three-fourths  of  the  aggregate  amount  of  wheat  con- 
sumed in  the  United  Kingdom  was  of  home  growth, 
and  little  more  than  one-fourth  was  derived  from  foreign 
source! " ;  but  five  and  twenty  years  later  the  figures 
were  almost  reversed,  that  is,  "  during  the  eight  years 
1 879- 1 886,  little  more  than  one-third  has  been  provided 
by  home  crops  and  nearly  two-thirds  by  imports". 
But  neither  the  increase  of  population  by  8,000,000 
nor  the  increase  of  consumption  of  wheat  by  six-tenths 

•  Twenty-three  per  cent,  of  the  total  area  of  England,  40  per  cent,  in 
Wales,  and  75  per  cent,  in  Scotland  are  now  under  wood,  coppice, 
mountain,  heath,  water,  etc.  The  remainder,  i.e.,  32,777,513  acres,  which 
are  either  under  culture  or  under  permanent  pasture,  may  be  taken  as  the 
"cultivable  "  area  of  Great  Britain. 


44  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS 

of  a  bushel  per  head  could  account  for  the  change. 
In  the  years  1853-60  the  soil  of  Britain  nourished  one 
inhabitant  on  every  two  acres  cultivated :  why  did  it 
require  three  acres  in  order  to  nourish  the  same  inhabit- 
ant in  1887?  The  answer  is  plain:  merely  and  simply 
because  agriculture  had  fallen  into  neglect. 

In  fact,  the  area  under  wheat  had  been  reduced 
since  1853-60  by  full  1,590,000  acres,  and  therefore 
the  average  crop  of  the  years  1883-86  was  below  the 
average  crop  of  1853-60  by  more  than  40,000,000 
bushels ;  and  this  deficit  alone  represented  the  food  of 
more  than  7,000,000  inhabitants.  At  the  same  time 
the  area  under  barley,  oats,  beans,  and  other  spring 
crops  had  also  been  reduced  by  a  further  560,000  acres, 
which,  at  the  low  avereige  of  thirty  bushels  per  acre, 
would  have  represented  the  cereals  necessary  to  com- 
plete the  above  for  the  same  7,000,000  inhabitants. 
And  it  could  be  said  that  if  the  United  Kingdom 
imported  cereals  for  17,000,000  inhabitants  in  1887, 
instead  of  for  10,000,000  in  i860,  it  was  simply  because 
more  than  2,000,000  acres  had  gone  out  of  cultivation.* 
These  facts  are  well  known ;  but  usually  they  are  met 
with  the  remark  that  the  character  of  agriculture  had 
been  altered :  that  instead  of  growing  wheat,  meat  and 
milk  were  produced  in  this  country.  However,  the 
figures  for  1887,  compared  with  the  figures  for  i860, 
show  that  the  same  downward  movement  also  took  place 
under  the  heads  of  green  crops  and  the  like.  The  area 
under  potatoes  was  reduced  by  280,000  acres;  under 
turnips  by  180,000  acres;   and  although  there  was  an 

•Average  area  under  wheat  in  1853-60,  4,092,160  acres;  average 
crop,  14,310,779  quarters.  Average  area  under  wheat  in  1884-87, 
2,509,055  acres;  average  crop  (good  years),  9,198,956  quarters.  See 
Professor  W.  Fream's  Rothamstead  Experiments  (London,  1888),  page 
83.  I  take  in  the  above  Sir  John  Lawes'  figure  of  5-65  bushels  per  head 
of  population  every  year.  It  is  very  close  to  the  yearly  allowance  of 
5*67  bushels  of  the  French  statisticians.  The  Russian  statisticians 
reckon  5-67  bushels  of  winter  crops  (chiefly  rye)  and  2*5  bushels  of  spring 
crops  (sarrazin,  barley,  etc.). 


THE   POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE.  45 

increase  under  the  heads  of  mangold,  carrots,  etc.,  still 
the  aggregate  area  under  all  these  crops  was  reduced  by 
a  further  330,000  acres.  An  increase  of  area  was  found 
only  for  permanent  pasture  (2,800,000  acres)  and  grass 
under  rotation  (1,600,000  acres);  but  we  should  look 
in  vain  for  a  corresponding  increase  of  live  stock.  The 
increase  of  live  stock  which  took  place  during  those 
twenty- seven  years  was  not  sufficient  to  cover  even  the 
area  reclaimed  from  waste  land* 

Since  the  year  1887  affairs  went,  however,  from 
worse  to  worse.  If  we  take  Great  Britain  alone,  we 
see  that  in  1885  the  area  under  all  corn  crops  was 
8,392,006  acres;  that  is  very  small,  indeed,  in  com- 
parison to  the  area  which  could  have  been  cultivated; 
but  even  that  little  was  further  reduced  to  7,400,227 
acres  in  1895.  The  area  under  wheat  was  2,478,318 
acres  in  1885  (as  against  3,630,300  in  1874);  but  it 
dwindled  away  to  1,417,641  acres  in  1895,  while  the 
area  under  the  other  cereals  increased  by  a  trifle  only 
— from  5,198,026  acres  to  5,462,184 — the  total  loss 
on  all  cereals  being  nearly  1,000,000  acres  in  ten  years! 
Another  5,000,000  people  were  thus  compelled  to  get 
their  food  from  abroad 

Did  the  area  under  green  crops  increase  during 
that  decade.?  Not  in  the  least!  It  was  further 
reduced  by  nearly  300,000  acres  (3,521,602  in  1885, 
and  3,225,762  in  1895).  Or,  was  the  area  under  clover 
and  grasses  in  rotation  increased  in  proportion  to  all 
these  reductions  ?  Alas,  no !  It  remained  almost 
stationary  (4,654,173  acres  in  1885,  and  4,729,801  in 
1895).     In  short,  taking  all  the  land  that  is  under  crops 

•There  was  an  increase  of  1,800,000  head  of  horned  cattle,  and 
a  decrease  of  \\  million  sheep  {6|  millions,  if  we  compare  the  year  1886 
with  1868),  which  would  correspond  to  an  increase  of  x\  million  of 
units  of  cattle,  because  eight  sheep  are  reckoned  as  equiv^ent  to  one 
head  of  horned  cattle.  But  five  million  acres  having  been  reclaimed 
upon  waste  land  since  i860;  the  above  increase  should  hardly  do  for 
covering  that  area,  so  that  the  7,\  million  acres  which  were  cultivated  no 
longer  remained  fully  uncovered.     They  were  a  pure  loss  to  the  nation. 


46  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

in  rotation  (17,201,490  acres  in  1885  and  16,166,950 
acres  in  1895),  we  see  that  within  the  last  ten  years  an- 
other 1,000,000  acres  went  out  of  cultivation,  without 
any  compensation  whatever.  It  went  to  increase  that 
already  enormous  area  of  more  than  16,000,000  acres 
— one-half  of  the  cultivable  area — which  goes  under  the 
head  of  "  permanent  pasture,"  that  is,  hardly  suffices  to 
feed  one  cow  on  each  three  acres ! 

Need  I  say,  after  that,  that  quite  to  the  contrary 
of  what  we  are  told  about  the  British  agriculturists 
becoming  "  meat-makers  "  instead  of  "  wheat-growers  " 
no  increase  of  live  stock  took  place  during  the  last 
ten  years.  Where,  indeed,  could  they  find  their 
food.?  Far  from  devoting  the  land  freed  from  cereals 
to  "  meat-making,"  the  country  further  reduced  its 
live  stock.  It  had  6,597,964  head  of  horned  cattle 
in  1885,  and  6,354,336  only  in  1895;  26,534,600  sheep 
in  1885  and  25,792,200  sheep  in  1895.  True,  the 
number  of  horses  was  increased ;  every  butcher  and 
greengrocer  runs  now  a  horse  "  to  take  orders  at  the 
gents'  doors"  (in  Sweden  and  Switzerland,  by  the  way, 
they  do  it  by  telephone);  and  consequently  Great 
Britain  has  1,545,228  horses  instead  of  the  1,408,788 
she  had  in  1885.  But  the  horses  are  imported,  as  also 
the  oats  and  a  considerable  amount  of  the  hay  that  is 
required  for  feeding  them.  And  if  the  consumption  of 
meat  has  really  increased  in  this  country,  it  is  due  to 
cheap  imported  meat,  not  to  the  meat  that  would  be  pro- 
duced in  these  islands.*  In  short,  agriculture  has  not 
changed  its  direction,  as  we  are  often  told;  it  simply 
went  down  in  all  directions.  Land  is  going  out  of  cul- 
ture at  a  perilous  rate,  while  the  latest  improvements  in 
market-gardening,  fruit-growing  and  poultry-keeping 
are  but  a  mere  trifle  if  we  compare  them  with  what  has 


•  No  less  than  5,877,000  cwts.  of  beef  and  mutton,  1,065,470  sheep  and 
lambs,  and  415,565  pieces  of  cattle  were  imported  in  1895. 


THK   POSSIBILITIES  OF   AGRICULTURE.  47 

been  done  in  the  same  direction  in   France,   Belgium 
and  America. 

The  cause  of  this  general  downward  movement  is 
self-evident.  It  is  the  desertion,  the  abandonment  of 
the  land.  Each  crop  requiring  human  labour  has  had  its 
area  reduced  ;  and  one-third  of  the  agricultural  labourers 
have  been  sent  away  since  1861  to  reinforce  the  ranks 
of  the  unemployed  in  the  cities,*  so  that  far  from  being 
over-populated,  the  fields  of  Britain  are  starved  of 
human  labour  as  James  Caird  used  to  say.  The  British 
nation  does  not  work  on  her  soil ;  she  is  prevented  from 
doing  so ;  and  the  would-be  economists  complain  that 
the  soil  will  not  nourish  its  inhabitants! 

I  once  took  a  knapsack  and  went  on  foot  out  of 
London,  through  Sussex.  I  had  read  L^once  de  La- 
vergne's  work  and  expected  to  find  a  soil  busily  culti- 
vated ;  but  neither  round  London  nor  still  less  farther 
south  did  I  see  men  in  the  fields.  In  the  Weald  I  could 
walk  for  twenty  miles  without  crossing  anything  but 
heath  or  woodlands,  rented  as  pheasant-shooting  grounds 
to  "  London  gentlemen,"  as  the  labourers  said.  "  Un- 
grateful soil "  was  my  first  thought ;  but  then  I  would 
occasionally  come  to  a  farm  at  the  crossing  of  two  roads 
and  see  the  same  soil  bearing  a  rich  crop ;  and  my  next 
thought  was  tel  seigneur,  telle  terre,  as  the  French 
peasants  say.  Later  on  I  saw  the  rich  fields  of  the 
midland  counties ;  but  even  there  I  was  struck  by  not 
perceiving  the  same  busy  human  labour  which  I  was 
accustomed  to  admire  on  the  Belgian  and  French  fields. 
But  I  ceased  to  wonder  when  I  learnt  that  only 
1,383,000  men  and  women  in  Englcind  and  Wales  work 
in  the  fields,  while  more  than  16,000,000  belong  to  the 
"  professional,  domestic,  indefinite,  and  unproductive 
class,"  as  these  pitiless  statisticians  say.     One  million 


•  Agricultural  labourers  in  England  and  Wales :  2,100,000  in  1861  i 
1,383,000  in  1884 ;  1,311,720  in  1891. 


48  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

and  three  hundred  thousand  human  beings  cannot  pro- 
ductively cultivate  an  area  of  33,000,000  acres  unless 
they  can  resort  to  the  Bonanza  farm's  methods  of  cul- 
ture. 

Again,  taking  Harrow  as  the  centre  of  my  excursions, 
I  could  walk  five  miles  towards  London,  or  turning  my 
back  upon  it,  and  I  could  see  nothing  east  or  west  but 
meadow  land  on  which  they  hardly  cropped  two  tons 
of  hay  per  acre — scarcely  enough  to  keep  alive  one 
milch  cow  on  each  two  acres.  Man  is  conspicuous  by 
his  absence  from  those  meadows;  he  rolls  them  with 
a  heavy  roller  in  the  spring ;  he  spreads  some  manure 
every  two  or  three  years ;  then  he  disappears  until  the 
time  has  come  to  make  hay.  And  that — within  ten 
miles  from  Charing  Cross,  close  to  a  city  with  5,000,000 
inhabitants,  supplied  with  Flemish  and  Jersey  potatoes, 
French  salads  and  Canadian  apples.  In  the  hands  of 
the  Paris  gardeners,  each  thousand  acres  situated  within 
the  same  distance  from  the  city  would  be  cultivated  by 
at  least  2000  human  beings,  who  would  get  vegetables 
to  the  value  of  from  £^0  to  £300  per  acre.  But  here 
the  acres  which  only  need  human  hands  to  become 
an  inexhaustible  source  of  golden  crops  lie  idle,  and 
they  say  to  us,  "  Heavy  clay !  "  without  even  knowing 
that  in  the  hands  of  man  there  are  no  unfertile  soils ; 
that  the  most  fertile  soils  are  not  in  the  prairies  of 
America,  nor  in  the  Russian  steppes ;  that  they  are  in 
the  peat-bogs  of  Ireland,  on  the  sand  downs  of  the 
northern  sea-coast  of  France,  on  the  craggy  mountains 
of  the  Rhine,  where  they  have  been  made  by  man's 
hands. 

The  most  striking  fact  is,  however,  that  in  some 
undoubtedly  fertile  parts  of  the  country  things  are  even 
in  a  worse  condition.  My  heart  simply  ached  when  I 
saw  the  state  in  which  land  is  kept  in  South  Devon, 
and  when  I  learned  to  know  what  "  permanent  pasture  ** 
means.     Field  after  field  is  covered  with  UQthing  but 


THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF  AGRICULTURE.  49 

grass,  three  inches  high,  and  thistles  in  profusion. 
Twenty,  thirty  such  fields  can  be  seen  at  one  glance 
from  the  top  of  every  hill ;  and  thousands  -of  acres  are 
in  that  state,  notwithstanding  that  the  grandfathers  of 
the  present  generation  have  devoted  a  formidable 
amount  of  labour  to  the  clearing  of  that  land  from  the 
stones,  to  fencing  it,  roughly  draining  it  and  the  like. 
In  every  direction  I  could  see  abandoned  cottages  and 
orchards  going  to  ruin.  A  whole  population  has  dis- 
appeared, and  even  its  last  vestiges  must  disappear  if 
things  continue  to  go  on  as  they  have  gone.  And  this 
takes  place  in  a  part  of  th^  country  endowed 
with  a  most  fertile  soil  and  possessed  of  a  climate 
which  is  certainly  more  congenial  than  the  cli- 
mate of  Jersey  in  spring  and  early  summer — a  land 
upon  which  even  the  poorest  cottagers  occasionally  raise 
potatoes  as  early  as  the  first  half  of  May.  But  how  can 
that  land  be  cultivated  when  there  is  nobody  to  cultivate 
it  ?  "  We  have  fields ;  men  go  by,  but  never  go  in,"  an 
old  labourer  said  to  me ;  and  so  it  is  in  reality.* 

It  will  be  said,  of  course,  that  the  above  opinion 
strangely  contrasts  with  the  well-known  superiority  of 
British  agriculture.  Do  we  not  know,  indeed,  that 
British  crops  average  twenty-eight  bushels  of  wheat  per 
acre,  while  in  France  they  reach  only  seventeen  bushels  ? 
Does  it  not  stand  in  all  almanacs  that  Britain  gets  every 
year  ;;^  180,000,000  sterling  worth  of  animal  produce- 
milk,  cheese,  meat  and  wool — from  her  fields  ?  All  that 
is  true,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  in  many  respects 
British  agriculture  is  superior  to  that  of  many  other  na- 
tions.   As  regards  obtaining  the  greatest  amount  of  pro- 

*  Round  the  small  hamlet  where  I  stayed  for  two  summers,  there  were : 
one  farm,  370  acres,  four  labourers  and  two  boys;  another,  about  300 
acres,  two  men  and  two  boys;  a  third,  800  acres,  five  men  only  pnd 
probably  as  many  boys.  In  truth,  the  problem  of  cultivating  the  lai.J 
with  the  least  number  of  men  has  been  solved  in  this  spot  by  not  culti 
vating  at  all  as  much  as  two-thirds  of  it. 

4 


50  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND  WORKSHOPS. 

duce  with  the  least  amount  of  labour,  Britain  undoubtedly 
took  the  lead  until  she  was  superseded  by  America. 
Again,  as  regards  the  fine  breeds  of  cattle,  the  splendid 
state  of  the  meadows  and  the  results  obtained  in  separate 
farms,  there  is  much  to  be  learned  from  Britain.  But 
a  closer  acquaintance  with  British  agriculture  as  a  whole 
discloses  many  features  of  inferiority.  However  splen- 
did, a  meadow  remains  a  meadow,  much  inferior  in 
productivity  to  a  cornfield ;  and  the  fine  breeds  of  cattle 
appear  to  be  poor  creatures  as  long  as  each  ox  requires 
three  acres  of  land  to  be  fed  upon.  Certainly  one  may 
indulge  in  some  admiration  at  the  average  twenty-eight 
bushels  grown  in  this  country ;  but  when  we  learn  that 
only  1,417,000  acres,  out  of  the  cultivable  33,000,000, 
bear  such  crops,  we  are  quite  disappointed.  Any  one 
could  obtain  like  results  if  he  were  to  put  all  his  manure 
into  one-twentieth  part  of  the  area  which  he  possesses. 
Again,  the  twenty-eight  bushels  no  longer  appear  to 
us  so  satisfactory  when  we  learn  that  without  any  man- 
uring, merely  by  means  of  a  good  culture,  they  have 
obtained  at  Rothamstead  an  average  of  fourteen  bushels 
per  acre  from  the  same  plot  of  land  for  forty  consecutive 
years ;  *  while  with  manuring  they  obtain  thirty-eight 
bushels  instead  of  twenty-eight,  and  under  the  allotment 
system  the  crops  reach  forty  bushels.  In  some  farms 
they  occasionally  attain  even  fifty  and  fifty-seven 
bushels  per  acre. 

If  we  intend  to  have  a  correct  appreciation  of  British 
agriculture,  we  must  not  base  it  upon  what  is  obtained 
on  a  few  selected  and  well-manured  plots ;  we  must 
inquire  what  is  done  with  the  territory,  taken  as  a 
whole.t     Now,  out  of  each  1000  acres  of  the  aggregate 

*  The  Rothamstead  Experiments,  1888,  by  Professor  W.  Fream,  p  35  seq. 

f  The  figures  which  I  take  for  these  calculations  are  given  in  the 
Statesman's  Year-book,  1896,  and  the  Agricultural  Returns  of  the  Board 
of  Agriculture  for  1895. 

They  are  as  follows: — 

Acres, 
Total  area  (Great  Britain) 56,457,500 


THE    POSSIBILITIES    OF   AGRICULTURE. 


51 


Fio.  I. — Proportion  of  the  cultivated  area  which  is  given  to  cereals 
altogedier,  and  to  wheat,  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland. 


52  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND    WORKSHOPS. 

territory  of  England,  Wales  and  Scotland,  418  acres  are 
left  under  wood,  coppice,  heath,  buildings  and  so  on. 
We  need  not  find  fault  with  that  division,  because  it 
depends  very  much  upon  natural  causes.  In  France 
and  Belgium  one-third  of  the  territory  is  in  like  manner 
also  treated  as  uncultivable,  although  portions  of  it  are 
continually  reclaimed  and  brought  under  culture.  But, 
leaving  aside  the  "  uncultivable  "  portion,  let  us  see  what 
is  done  with  the  582  acres  out  of  1000  of  the  "cultiv- 
able "  part  (32,777,000  acres  in  Great  Britain).  First 
of  all,  it  is  divided  into  two  almost  equal  parts,  and  one 
of  them — 295  acres  out  of  1 000 — is  left  under  "  perma- 
nent pasture,"  that  is,  in  most  cases  it  is  entirely  un- 
cultivated. Very  little  hay  is  obtained  from  it,*  and 
some  cattle  are  grazed  upon  it.  More  than  one-half  of 
the  cultivable  area  is  thus  left  without  cultivation,  and 
the  remainder,  i.e.,  287  acres  only  out  of  each  1000 
acres,  is  under  culture.  Out  of  these  last,  no  acres  are 
under  corn  crops,  twenty-one  acres  under  potatoes,  fifty- 


Uncultivable  area : —  Acres. 

England  ...•«••  7,481,000 

Wales •        •  1,885,000 

Scotland 14,314,000 

Great  Britain  ..••••...     23,680,000 

Cultivable  area : — 

Great  Britain •         .         .     32,777,500 

Out  of  it,  under : — 

Permanent  pasture 16,610,563 

Clover  and  mature  grasses 4,729,801 

Corn  crops  and  potatoes  (541,217  acres) ....  7,400,227 

Green  crops 3,225,762 

Bare  fallow,  etc 475,650 

Hops 58,940 

Small  fruit 74.547 

Flax 2,023 

Under  culture  (including  permanent  pasture  giving  hay)        .  16,166,950 

Out  of  the  6,879,825  acres  given  to  corn  crops,  1,417,641  acres  were 
under  wheat;  2,166,279  under  barley,  and  3,225,905  under  oats. 

*  Only  from  each  eighty-five  acres,  out  of  these  295,  hay  is  obtained. 
The  remainder  are  grazing  grounds. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF  AGRICULTURE.  53 

seven  acres  under  green  crops  and  eighty-four  acres 
under  clover  fields  and  grasses  under  rotation.  And 
finally,  out  of  the  no  acres  given  to  corn  crops,  the 
best  twenty-five  acres  (one-fortieth  part  of  the  territory, 
one-twenty-third  of  the  cultivable  area)  are  picked  out 
and  sown  with  wheat  They  are  well  cultivated,  well 
manured,  and  upon  them  an  average  of  twenty-eight 
bushels  to  the  acre  is  obtained ;  and  upon  these  twenty- 
five  acres  out  of  1000  the  world  superiority  of  British 
agriculture  is  based. 

The  net  result  of  all  that  is,  that  on  nearly  33,000,000 
acres  of  cultivable  land  the  food  is  grown  for  one-third 
part  only  of  the  population  (two-thirds  of  the  food  it  con- 
sumes is  imported),  and  we  may  say  accordingly  that, 
although  nearly  two-thirds  of  the  territory  is  cultivable, 
British  agriculture  provides  home-grown  food  for  each 
125  or  130  inhabitants  only  per  square  mile  (out  of 
378).  In  other  words,  nearly  three  acres  of  the  cul- 
tivable area  are  required  to  grow  the  food  for  each 
person.  Let  us  then  see  what  is  done  with  the  land  in 
France  and  Belgium. 

Now,  if  we  simply  compare  the  average  twenty-eight 
bushels  per  acre  of  wheat  in  Great  Britain  with  the 
average  seventeen  bushels  in  France,  the  comparison 
is  all  in  favour  of  these  islands ;  but  such  averages  are 
of  little  value  because  the  two  systems  of  agriculture 
are  totally  different  in  the  two  countries.  The  French- 
man also  has  his  picked  and  heavily  manured  "  twenty- 
five  acres  "  in  the  north  of  France  and  in  Ile-de-France, 
and  from  these  picked  acres  he  obtains  average  crops 
ranging  from  thirty-one  to  thirty-three  bushels.*     How- 

*  That  is,  thirty-one  to  thirty-three  bushels  on  the  average ;  forty 
bushels  in  good  farms,  and  fifty  in  the  best.  The  area  under  wheat  is 
17,500,000  acres :  the  cultivated  area,  95,000,000  acres ;  and  the  aggregate 
superficies  of  France,  132,000,000  acres.  Compare  Lecouteux,  he  hie,  sa 
culture  extensive  et  intensive^  1883  ;  Risler,  Physiologie  et  culture  du  ble, 
18S6;  Boitet,  Herbages  et  prairies  nattirelles,  1885;  Baudrillart,  Les 
populations  agricoles  de  la  Normandie,  1880;  Grandeau,  La  production 
ai^ricole  en  Prance;   L^once  de  Lavergne's  last  edition;   and  so  on. 


54  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

ever,  he  sows  with  wheat,  not  only  the  best  picked  out 
acres,  but  also  such  fields  on  the  Central  Plateau  and 
in  Southern  France  as  hardly  yield  ten,  eight  and  even 
six  bushels  to  the  acre,  without  irrigation ;  and  these 
low  crops  reduce  the  average  for  the  whole  country. 
The  Frenchman  cultivates  much  that  is  left  here  under 
permanent  pasture — and  this  is  what  is  described  as 
his  "inferiority"  in  agriculture.  In  fact,  although  the 
proportion  between  what  we  have  named  the  "  cultiv- 
able area  "  and  the  total  territory  is  very  much  the  same 
in  France  as  it  is  in  Great  Britain  (624  acres  out  of  each 
1000  acres  of  the  territory),  the  area  under  wheat  crops 
is  nearly  six  times  as  great,  in  proportion,  as  what  it 
is  in  Great  Britain  (146  acres  instead  of  twenty-five, 
out  of  each  1000  acres);  the  corn  crops  altogether 
cover  more  than  two-fifths  of  the  cultivable  area,  and 
large  areas  are  given  besides  to  green  crops,  industrial 
crops,  vine,  fruit  and  vegetables. 

Taking  everything  into  consideration,  although  the 
Frenchman  keeps  less  cattle,  and  especially  grazes  less 
sheep  than  the  Briton,  he  nevertheless  obtains  from 
his  soil  nearly  all  the  food  that  he  and  his  cattle  con- 
sume. He  imports,  in  an  average  year,  but  one-tenth 
only  of  what  the  nation  consumes,  and  he  exports  to 
this  country  considerable  quantities  of  food  produce 
(i^  1 0,000,000  worth),  not  only  from  the  south,  but  also, 
and  especially,  from  the  shores  of  the  Channel  (Brit- 
tany butter  and  vegetables ;  fruit  and  vegetables  from 
the  suburbs  of  Paris,  and  so  on).* 

The  net  result  is  that,  although  one-third  part  of  the 
territory  is  also  treated  as  "  uncultivable,"  the  soil  of 

•  The  exports  from  France  In  1894  (average  year)  attained :  wine 
233,000,000  fr.,  spirits  54,000,000  fr.,  cheese,  butter  and  sugar  114,000,000 
fr.  To  this  country  France  sent,  same  year,  £2,744,870  worth  of  wine, 
;i^2,227,36o  worth  of  refined  sugar,  ;£"2,35 1,870  worth  of  butter,  ;£"g82,8oo 
worth  of  eggs  (;^i,6ii,5oo  in  1893),  and  ;£i,402,300  worth  of  brandy,  all 
of  French  origin  only,  in  addition  to  ;£'i4,403,040  worth  of  manufactured 
silks  and  woollens.  The  exports  from  Algeria  arc  not  taken  in  the  above 
figures. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF   AGRICULTURE.  55 

France  yields  the  food  for  170  inhabitants  per  square 
mile  (out  of  188),  that  is,  for  forty  persons  more,  per 
square  mile,  than  this  country.* 

It  is  thus  apparent  that  the  comparison  with  France 
is  not  so  much  in  favour  of  this  country  as  it  is  said 
to  be ;  and  it  will  be  still  less  favourable  when  we  come, 
in  our  next  chapter,  to  horticulture.  As  to  the  com- 
parison with  Belgium,  it  is  even  more  striking — the 
more  so  as  the  two  systems  of  culture  are  similar  in 
both  countries.  To  begin  with,  in  Belgium  we  also  find 
an  average  crop  of  twenty-seven  and  eight-tenths 
bushels  of  wheat  to  the  acre  ;  but  the  area  given  to  wheat 
is  five  times  as  big  as  Great  Britain,  in  comparison 
to  the  cultivable  area,  and  the  cereals  cover  almost  one 
half  of  the  land  available  for  culture.!  The  land  is  so 
well  cultivated  that  the  average  crops  for  the  years  1889- 

*  Each  1000  acres  of  French  territory  are  disposed  of  as  follows :  376 
acres  are  left  under  wood,  coppice,  communal  grazing  grounds,  etc.,  and 
624  acres  are  treated  as  "cultivable".  Out  of  each  "cultivable"  624 
acres,  128  are  under  meadows  (now  irrigated  to  a  great  extent),  ninety- 
two  under  bare  fallow  and  various  cultures,  272  under  cereals,  eighty- 
three  under  green  and  industrial  crops,  forty-seven  under  vineyards.  No 
less  than  146  acres  are  under  wheat,  which  yields  twenty-eight  to  thirty 
bushels  in  two  departments,  twenty-six  bushels  in  twelve  departments. 

On  the  whole,  more  than  seventeen  bushels  per  acre  is  the  average  in 
one  half  of  the  country,  and  less  than  seventeen  bushels  in  the  other  half. 

As  to  cattle,  we  find  in  Great  Britain  6,353,336  cattle  {i.e.,  nineteen 
head  per  each  100  acres  of  the  cultivable  area),  including  in  that 
number  over  1,250,000  calves  under  one  year,  and  25,792,195  sheep  {i.e., 
seventy-nine  sheep  per  100  acres  of  the  same).  In  France  we  find 
12,879,240  cattle  (sixteen  head  per  each  100  acres  of  cultivable  area)  and 
only  20,721,850  sheep  (twenty-five  sheep  per  100  acres  of  the  same).  In 
other  words,  the  proportion  of  horned  cattle  is  nearly  the  same  in  both 
countries  (nineteen  head  and  sixteen  head  per  loo  acres),  a  considerable 
difference  appearing  in  favour  of  this  country  only  as  to  the  number  of 
sheep  (seventy-nine  as  against  twenty-five).  The  heavy  imports  of  hay, 
oil-cake,  oats,  etc.,  into  this  country  must,  however,  not  be  forgotten, 
because,  for  each  head  of  cattle  which  lives  on  imported  food,  eight  sheep 
can  be  grazed,  or  be  fed  with  home-grown  fodder.  As  to  horses,  both 
countries  stand  on  nearly  the  same  footing. 

t  Out  of  each  1000  acres  of  the  territory,  673  are  cultivable,  and  327  are 
left  as  uncultivable.  Of  the  former,  317  acres  are  given  to  cereals,  182  to 
green  crops  and  grasses  under  rotation  ;  121  acres  are  given  to  wheat  and 
wheat  mixed  with  rye  (ninety-four  to  pure  wheat).  Moreover,  upon  each 
sixty-three  acres,  out  ot  1000,  catch  crops  of  carrots,  mangold  and  swtdes 
4re  obtained. 


56  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

92  (the  very  bad  year  of  1891  being  left  out  of  account) 
were  twenty-eight  and  six-tenths  bushels  per  acre  for 
winter  wheat ;  nearly  forty-seven  bushels  for  oats 
(thirty-five  to  forty-one  and  a  half  in  Great  Britain), 
and  forty  bushels  for  winter  barley  (twenty-nine  to 
thirty-five  in  Great  Britain) ;  while  on  no  less  than 
459,800  acres  catch  crops  of  swedes  (2,226,250  tons) 
and  carrots  (155,000  tons)  were  obtained.  All  taken, 
they  grow  in  Belgium  more  than  76,000,000  bushels  of 
cereals,  i.e.^  fifteen  and  seven-tenths  bushels  per  acre  of 
the  cultivable  area,  while  the  corresponding  figure  for 
Great  Britain  is  only  eight  and  a  half  bushels ;  and  they 
keep  almost  twice  as  much  cattle  upon  each  cultivable 
acre  as  is  kept  in  Great  Britain.*  Large  portions  of  the 
land  are  given  besides  to  the  culture  of  industrial  plants, 
potatoes  for  spirit,  beet  for  sugar,  and  so  on. 

However,  it  must  not  be  believed  that  the  soil  of 
Belgium  is  more  fertile  than  the  soil  of  this  country. 
On  the  contrary,  to  use  the  word*  of  Laveleye,  "  only 
one  half,  or  less,  of  the  territory  offers  natural  condi- 
tions which  ajre  favourable  for  agriculture  " ;  the  other 
half  consists  of  a  gravelly  soil,  or  sands,  "  the  natural 
sterility  of  which  could  be  overpowered  only  by  heavy 
manuring  ".  Man,  not  nature,  has  given  to  the  Belgian 
soil  its  present  productivity.  With  this  soil  and  labour, 
Belgium  succeeds  in  supplying  nearly  all  the  food  of  a 
population  which  is  denser  than  that  of  England  and 
Wales,  and  numbers  544  inhabitants  to  the  square  mile. 
If  the  exports  and  imports  of  agricultural  produce  from 
and  into  Belgium  be  taken  into  account,  we  can  say  that 

*  Taking  all  horses,  cattle  and  sheep  in  both  countries,  and  reckoning 
eight  sheep  as  equivalent  to  one  head  of  horned  cattle,  we  find  that 
Belgium  has  twenty-three  cattle  units  and  horses  upon  each  lOo  acres  of 
territory,  as  against  twenty  same  units  and  horses  in  Great  Britain.  If 
we  take  cattle  alone,  the  disproportion  is  much  greater,  as  we  find  thirty- 
six  cattle  units  on  each  loo  acres  of  cultivable  area,  as  against  nineteen 
in  Great  Britain.  The  annual  value  of  animal  produce  in  Belgium  is 
estimated  by  the  Annuaire  Statistique  de  la  Belgique  (1893,  p.  263)  at 
^^58,039,050,  including  poultry  (;£i, 534,000). 


THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF   AGRICULTURE.  $7 

Laveleye's   conclusions   are   still   good,   and   that    only 
one  inhabitant  out  of  each  ten  to  twenty  requires  im- 


Fio.  2. — Proportion  ot  the  cultivated  area  which  is  given  to  cereals 
altogether,  and  to  wheat,  in  Belgium.  The  square  which  encloses 
the  wheat  square  represents  the  area  given  to  both  wheat  and  a 
mixture  of  wheat  with  rye. 

ported  food.     The  soil  of  Belgium  supplies  with  home- 
grown food  no  less  than  490  inhabitants  per  square  mile^ 


58 


FIELDS,    FACTORIES    AND    WORKSHOPS. 


and  there  remains  something  for  export — no  less  than 
£"1,000,000  worth  of  agricultural  produce  being  exported 


Fig.  3. — Proportion  of  cultivated  and  uncultivated  areas  in  Great 
Britain,  Belg[ium  and  France,  a,  Wheat ;  b,  wheat  and  rye 
mixed ;  c,  other  cereals ;  d,  green  crops  and  permanent  pasture ; 
e,  uncultivated. 

every  year  to  Great   Britain.     Besides,   it  must  not  be 
forgotten    that    Belgium    is    a    manufacturing    country 


THE   POSSIBILITIES  OF   AGRICULTURE.  59 

which  exports  home-made  goods  to  the  value  of  £g  per 
head  of  population  (;^  5  6,000,000,  on  the  average,  in 
1886-92),  while  the  total  exports  from  the  United  King- 
dom attain  only  £6  /s.  per  inhabitant.  As  to  separate 
parts  of  the  Belgian  territory,  the  small  and  naturally 
unfertile  province  of  West  Flanders  not  only  grows 
the  food  of  its  580  inhabitants  on  the  square  mile,  but 
exports  agricultural  produce  to  the  value  of  25  s.  per 
head  of  its  population.  And  yet  no  one  can  read  Lave- 
leye's  masterly  work  without  coming  to  the  conclusion 
that  Flemish  agriculture  would  have  realised  still  better 
results  were  it  not  hampered  in  its  growth  by  the  steady 
and  heavy  increase  of  rent  In  the  face  of  the  rent 
being  increased  each  nine  years,  many  farmers  have 
lately  abstained  from  further  improvements. 

Without  going  as  far  as  China,  I  might  quote  similar 
examples  from  elsewhere,  especially  from  Lombardy. 
But  the  above  will  be  enough  to  caution  the  reader 
against  hasty  conclusions  as  to  the  impossibility  of  feed- 
ing 39,000,000  people  from  78,000,000  acres.  They 
also  will  enable  me  to  draw  the  following  conclusions : 
(l)  If  the  soil  of  the  United  Kingdom  were  cultivated 
only  as  it  was  thirty-five  years  ago,  24,000,000  people, 
instead  of  1 7,000,000,  could  live  on  home-grown  food ; 
and  that  culture,  while  giving  occupation  to  an  additional 
750,000  men,  would  give  nearly  3,000,000  wealthy  home 
customers  to  the  British  manufactures.  (2)  If  the  cul- 
tivable area  of  the  United  Kingdom  were  cultivated  as 
the  soil  is  cultivated  on  the  average  in  Belgium,  the 
United  Kingdom  would  have  food  for  at  least  37,000,000 
inhabitants ;  and  it  might  export  agricultural  produce 
without  ceasing  to  manufacture  so  as  freely  to  supply 
all  the  needs  of  a  wealthy  population.  And  finally  (3), 
if  the  population  of  this  country  came^to  be  doubled, 
all  that  would  be  required  for  producing  the  food  for 
80,000,000  inhabitants  would  be  to  cultivate  the  soil 
as  it  is  cultivated  in  the  best  farms  of  this  country. 


62 


FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 


lb.  of  beet,  they  occur  in  numbers  in  the  French  com- 
petitions, and  the  success  depends  entirely  upon  good 
culture  and  appropriate  manuring.  It  thus  appears  that 
while  under  ordinary  high  farming  we  need  from 
2,000,000  acres  to  keep  1,000,000  horned  cattle,  double 
that  amount  could  be  kept  on  one-half  of  that  area ;  and 
if  the  density  of  population  required  it,  the  amount  of 
cattle  could  be  doubled  again,  and  the  area  required 
to  keep  it  might  still  be  one-half,  or  even  one-third  of 
what  it  is  now  * 

The  above  examples  are  striking  enough,  and  yet 
those  afforded  by  the  market-gardening  culture  are  still 
more  striking.  I  mean  the  culture  carried  on  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  big  cities,  and  more  especially  the 
culture  maraichlre  round  Paris.  In  that  culture  each 
plant  is  treated  according  to  its  age.  The  seeds  ger- 
minate and  the  seedlings  develop  their  first  four  leaflets 
in  especially  favourable  conditions  of  soil  and  tempera- 
ture ;  then  the  best  seedlings  are  picked  out  and  trans- 
planted into  a  bed  of  fine  loam,  under  a  frame  or  in  the 
open  air,  where  they  freely  develop  their  rootlets  and, 
gathered  on  a  limited  space,  receive  more  than  usual 
care;  and  only  after  that  preliminary  training  are  they 
bedded  in  the  open  ground,  where  they  grow  till  ripe. 


•Assuming  that  9000  lb.  of  dry  hay  are  necessary  for  keeping  one 
head  of  horned  cattle  every  year,  the  following  figures  (taken  from 
Toubeau's  Repartition  metrique  des  impots)  will  show  what  we  obtain 
now  under  usual  and  under  intensive  culture: — 


Crop  per  acre. 
Eng.  lb. 

Equivalent  in 

Number  of 

dry  hay. 

cattle  fed  from 

Eng.  lb. 

each  100  acres. 

Pasture 

_ 

1,200 

13 

Unirrigated  meadows . 

— 

2,400 

26 

Clover,  cut  twice 

— 

4,800 

52 

Swedish  turnips  . 

38,500 

10,000 

108 

Rye-grass    . 

64,000 

18,000 

180 

Beet,  high  farming 

64,000 

21,000 

210 

Indian  corn,  ensilage  . 

120,000 

30,000 

330 

THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF  AGRICULTURE.  63 

In  such  a  culture  the  primitive  condition  of  the  soil  is  of 
little  account,  because  loam  is  made  out  of  the  old  forc- 
ing beds.  The  seeds  are  carefully  tried,  the  seedlings 
receive  proper  attention,  and  there  is  no  fear  of  drought, 
because  of  the  variety  of  crops,  the  liberal  watering  with 
the  help  of  a  steam  engine,  and  the  stock  of  plants 
always  kept  ready  to  replace  the  weakest  individuals. 
Almost  each  plant  is  treated  individually. 

There  prevails,  however,  with  regard  to  market- 
gardening,  a  misunderstanding  which  it  would  be  well 
to  remove.  It  is  generally  supposed  that  what  chiefly 
attracts  market-gardening  to  the  great  centres  of  popu- 
lation is  the  market  It  must  have  been  so ;  and  so  it 
may  be  still,  but  to  some  extent  only.  A  great  number 
of  the  Paris  mar aic hers ^  even  of  those  who  have  their 
gardens  within  the  walls  of  the  city  and  whose  main 
crop  consists  of  vegetables  in  season,  export  the  whole 
of  their  produce  to  England.  What  chiefly  attracts  the 
gardener  to  the  great  cities  is  stable  manure ;  and  this 
is  not  wanted  so  much  for  increasing  the  richness  of  the 
soil — one-tenth  part  of  the  manure  used  by  the  French 
gardeners  would  do  for  that  purpose — but  for  keeping 
the  soil  at  a  certain  temperature.  Early  vegetables  pay 
best,  and  in  order  to  obtain  early  produce  not  only  the 
air  but  the  soil  as  well  must  be  warmed  ;  and  that  is  done 
by  putting  great  quantities  of  properly  mixed  manure 
into  the  soil ;  its  fermentation  heats  it  But  it  is  evident 
that  with  the  present  development  of  industrial  skill, 
the  heating  of  the  soil  could  be  obtained  more  economi- 
cally and  more  easily  by  hot-water  pipes.  Consequently, 
the  French  gardeners  begin  more  and  more  to  make 
use  of  portable  pipes,  or  thermosiphonSy  provisionally 
established  in  the  cool  frames.  This  new  improvement 
becomes  of  general  use,  and  we  have  the  authority  of 
Barral's  Dictionnaire  cT Agriculture  to  affirm  that  it  gives 
excellent  results. 

As  to  the  different  degrees  of  fertility  of  the  soil — 


62 


FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 


lb.  of  beet,  they  occur  in  numbers  in  the  French  com- 
petitions, and  the  success  depends  entirely  upon  good 
culture  and  appropriate  manuring.  It  thus  appears  that 
while  under  ordinary  high  farming  we  need  from 
2,000,000  acres  to  keep  1,000,000  horned  cattle,  double 
that  amount  could  be  kept  on  one-half  of  that  area ;  and 
if  the  density  of  population  required  it,  the  amount  of 
cattle  could  be  doubled  again,  and  the  area  required 
to  keep  it  might  still  be  one-half,  or  even  one-third  of 
what  it  is  now.* 

The  above  examples  are  striking  enough,  and  yet 
those  afforded  by  the  market-gardening  culture  are  still 
more  striking.  I  mean  the  culture  carried  on  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  big  cities,  and  more  especially  the 
culture  maraichlre  round  Paris.  In  that  culture  each 
plant  is  treated  according  to  its  age.  The  seeds  ger- 
minate and  the  seedlings  develop  their  first  four  leaflets 
in  especially  favourable  conditions  of  soil  and  tempera- 
ture ;  then  the  best  seedlings  are  picked  out  and  trans- 
planted into  a  bed  of  fine  loam,  under  a  frame  or  in  the 
open  air,  where  they  freely  develop  their  rootlets  and, 
gathered  on  a  limited  space,  receive  more  than  usual 
care ;  and  only  after  that  preliminary  training  are  they 
bedded  in  the  open  ground,  where  they  grow  till  ripe. 


•Assuming  that  9000  lb.  of  dry  hay  are  necessary  for  keeping  one 
head  of  horned  cattle  every  year,  the  following  figures  (taken  from 
Toubeau's  Repartition  metrique  des  impots)  will  show  what  we  obtain 
now  under  usual  and  under  intensive  culture: — 


Crop  per  acre. 
Eng.  lb. 

Equivalent  in 

Number  of 

dry  hay. 

cattle  fed  from 

Eng.  lb. 

each  100  acres. 

Pasture 

_ 

1,200 

13 

Unirrigated  meadows . 

— 

2,400 

26 

Clover,  cut  twice 

— 

4,800 

52 

Swedish  turnips  . 

38,500 

10,000 

108 

Rye-grass    . 

64,000 

18,000 

180 

Beet,  high  farming 

64,000 

21,000 

210 

Indian  corn,  ensilage  . 

120,000 

30,000 

330 

THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF  AGRICULTURE.  63 

In  such  a  culture  the  primitive  condition  of  the  soil  is  of 
little  account,  because  loam  is  made  out  of  the  old  forc- 
ing beds.  The  seeds  are  carefully  tried,  the  seedlings 
receive  proper  attention,  and  there  is  no  fear  of  drought, 
because  of  the  variety  of  crops,  the  liberal  watering  with 
the  help  of  a  steam  engine,  and  the  stock  of  plants 
always  kept  ready  to  replace  the  weakest  individuals. 
Almost  each  plant  is  treated  individually. 

There  prevails,  however,  with  regard  to  market- 
gardening,  a  misunderstanding  which  it  would  be  well 
to  remove.  It  is  generally  supposed  that  what  chiefly 
attracts  market-gardening  to  the  great  centres  of  popu- 
lation is  the  market  It  must  have  been  so ;  and  so  it 
may  be  still,  but  to  some  extent  only.  A  great  number 
of  the  Paris  maraichers,  even  of  those  who  have  their 
gardens  within  the  walls  of  the  city  and  whose  main 
crop  consists  of  vegetables  in  season,  export  the  whole 
of  their  produce  to  England.  What  chiefly  attracts  the 
gardener  to  the  great  cities  is  stable  manure ;  and  this 
is  not  wanted  so  much  for  increasing  the  richness  of  the 
soil — one-tenth  part  of  the  manure  used  by  the  French 
gardeners  would  do  for  that  purpose — but  for  keeping 
the  soil  at  a  certain  temperature.  Early  vegetables  pay 
best,  and  in  order  to  obtain  early  produce  not  only  the 
air  but  the  soil  as  well  must  be  warmed  ;  and  that  is  done 
by  putting  great  quantities  of  properly  mixed  manure 
into  the  soil ;  its  fermentation  heats  it  But  it  is  evident 
that  with  the  present  development  of  industrial  skill, 
the  heating  of  the  soil  could  be  obtained  more  economi- 
cally and  more  easily  by  hot-water  pipes.  Consequently, 
the  French  gardeners  begin  more  and  more  to  make 
use  of  portable  pipes,  or  thermosiphons,  provisionally 
established  in  the  cool  frames.  This  new  improvement 
becomes  of  general  use,  and  we  have  the  authority  of 
Barral's  Dictionnaire  d' Agriculture  to  afiirm  that  it  gives 
excellent  results. 

As  to  the  different  degrees  of  fertility  of  the  soil — 


64  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND    WORKSHOPS. 

always  the  stumbling-block  of  those  who  write  about 
agriculture — the  fact  is  that  in  market-gardening  the 
soil  is  always  made,  whatever  it  originally  may  have 
been.  Consequently — we  are  told  by  Prof.  Dybowski, 
in  the  article  "  MaraTchers "  in  Barral's  Dictionnaire 
(T Agriculture — it  is  now  a  usual  stipulation  of  the  rent- 
ing contracts  of  the  Paris  maraichers  that  the  gardener 
may  carry  away  his  soil,  down  to  a  certain  depth,  when 
he  quits  his  tenancy.  He  himself  makes  it,  and  when  he 
moves  to  another  plot  he  carts  his  soil  away,  together 
with  his  frames,  his  water-pipes,  and  his  other  belong- 
ings.* 

I  could  not  relate  here  all  the  marvels  achieved  in 
market-gardening;  so  that  I  must  refer  the  reader  to 
works — most  interesting  works — especially  devoted  to 
the  subject,  and  give  only  a  few  illustrations.f  Let 
us  take,  for  instance,  the  orchard — the  marais — of  M. 
Ponce,  the  author  of  a  well-known  work  on  the  culture 
maraich^re.  His  orchard  covered  only  two  and  seven- 
tenths  acres.  The  outlay  for  the  establishment,  including 
a  steam  engine  for  watering  purposes,  reached  ;£'ii36. 
Eight  persons,  M.  Ponce  included,  cultivated  the  orchard 

*  'I  Portable  soil "  is  not  the  latest  departure  in  agriculture.  The  last 
one  is  the  watering  of  the  soil  with  special  liquids  containing  special 
microbes.  It  is  a  fact  that  chemical  manures,  without  organic  manure, 
seldom  prove  to  be  sufficient.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  discovered 
lately  that  certain  microbes  in  the  soil  are  a  necessary  condition  for  the 
growth  of  plants.  Hence  the  idea  of  sowing  the  beneficent  microbes, 
which  rapidly  develop  in  the  soil  and  fertilise  it.  We  certainly  shall  soon 
hear  more  of  this  new  method,  which  is  experimented  upon  on  a  large 
scale  in  Germany,  in  order  to  transform  peat-bogs  and  heavy  soils  into 
rich  meadows  and  fields.  See  "  Recent  Science  "  in  Nineteenth  Century, 
October,  1897. 

t  Ponce,  La  culture  maraichlre,  1869  ;  Gressent,  Le  fotager  modeme, 
7th  edit.,  1886  ;  Courtois-Gdrard,  Manuel  pratique  de  culture  maraichere, 
1863  ;  Vilmorin,  Le  bon  jardinier  (almanac).  The  general  reader  who 
cares  to  know  about  the  productivity  of  the  soil  will  find  plenty  of 
exarnples,  well  classified,  in  the  most  interesting  work  La  Repartition 
metrique  des  impots,  by  A.  Toubeau,  2  vols.,  1880.  I  do  not  quote  many 
excellent  English  manuals,  but  I  must  remark  that  the  market-gardening 
culture  in  this  country  has  also  obtained  results  very  highly  prized  by  the 
Continental  gardeners,  and  that  the  chief  reproach  to  be  addressed  to  it 
is  its  relatively  small  extension. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE.  65 

and  carried  the  vegetables  to  the  market,   for  which 
purpose   one   horse   was   kept ;    when    returning    from 
Paris   they   brought  in  manure,   for  which   ;^ioo   was 
spent  every  year.     Another  ;;^iOO  was  spent  in  rent  and 
taxes.     But  how  to  enumerate  all  that  was  gathered 
every  year  on  this  plot  of  less  than  three  acres,  without 
filling   two   pages   or   more   with   the   most   wonderful 
figures?      One  must  read  them  in   M.   Ponce's  work, 
but  here  are  the  chief  items :   more  than  20,000  lb.  of 
carrots ;   more  than  20,000  lb.  of  onions,  radishes  and 
other  vegetables  sold  by  weight;    6000  heads  of  cab- 
bage;  3000  of  cauliflower;   5000  baskets  of  tomatoes; 
5000  dozen  of  choice  fruit ;  and  154,000  heads  of  salad ; 
in  short,  a  total  of  250,000  lb.  of  vegetables.     The  soil 
was  made  to  such  an  amount  out  of  forcing  beds  that 
every  year  250  cubic  yards  of  loam  had  to  be  sold. 
Similar  examples  could  be  given  by  the  dozen,  and  the 
best  evidence  against  any  possible  exaggeration  of  the 
results  is  the  very  high  rent  paid  by  the  gardeners,  which 
reaches  in  the  suburbs  of  London  from  i^io  to  ;^I5  per 
acre,  and  in  the*  suburbs  of  Paris  attains  as  much  as 
;^32  per  acre.     No  less  than  2125  acres  are  cultivated 
round  Paris  in  that  way  by  5000  persons,  and  thus  not 
only   the  2,000,000   Parisians  are   supplied  with  vege- 
tables, but  the  surplus  is  also  sent  to  London. 

The  above  results  are  obtained  with  the  help  of  warm 
frames,  thousands  of  glass  bells,  and  so  on.  But  even 
without  such  costly  things,  with  only  thirty-six  yards 
of  frames  for  seedlings,  vegetables  are  grown  in  the 
open  air  to  the  value  of  ;^200  per  acre.*  It  is  obvious, 
however,  that  in  such  cases  the  high  selling  prices  of  the 
crops  are  not  due  to  the  high  prices  fetched  by  early 
vegetables  in  winter ;  they  are  entirely  due  to  the  high 
crops  of  the  plainest  ones.  Let  me  add  also  that  all 
this  wonderful  culture  is  a  yesterday's  growth.     Fifty 

*  Mamiel  pratique  de  culture  maraichere^  by  Courtois-G6rard,  4th 
edit.,  1863. 

5 


66  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND  WORKSHOPS. 

years  ago  the  culture  maratchere  was  quite  primitive. 
But  now  the  Paris  gardener  not  only  defies  the  soil — he 
would  grow  the  same  crops  on  an  asphalt  pavement — 
he  defies  climate.  His  walls,  which  are  built  to  reflect 
light  and  to  protect  the  wall-trees  from  the  northern 
winds,  his  wall-tree  shades  and  glass  protectors,  his 
frames  and  pepinieres  have  made  a  real  garden,  a  rich 
Southern  garden,  out  of  the  suburbs  of  Paris.  He  has 
given  to  Paris  the  "two  degrees  less  of  latitude"  after 
which  a  French  scientific  writer  was  longing ;  he  supplies 
his  city  with  mountains  of  grapes  and  fruit  at  any 
season ;  and  in  the  early  spring  he  inundates  and  per- 
fumes it  with  flowers.  But  he  does  not  only  grow 
articles  of  luxury.  The  culture  of  plain  vegetables  on 
a  large  scale  is  spreading  every  year;  and  the  results 
are  so  good  that  there  are  now  practical  maraichers 
who  venture  to  maintain  that  if  all  the  food,  animal  and 
vegetable,  necessary  for  3,500,000  inhabitants  of  the 
departments  of  Seine  and  Seine-et-Oise  had  to  be 
grown  on  their  own  territory  (3250  square  miles),  it 
could  be  grown  without  resorting  to  any  other  methods 
of  culture  than  those  already  in  use — methods  already 
tested  on  a  large  scale  and  proved  to  be  successful. 

And  yet  the  Paris  gardener  is  not  our  ideal  of  an 
agriculturist.  In  the  painful  work  of  civilisation  he 
has  shown  us  the  way  to  follow  ;  but  the  ideal  of  modern 
civilisation  is  elsewhei;e.  He  toils,  with  but  a  short 
interruption,  from  three  in  the  morning  till  late  in  the 
night.  He  knows  no  leisure ;  he  has  no  time  to  hve 
the  life  of  a  human  being ;  the  commonwealth  does  not 
exist  for  him;  his  world  is  his  garden,  more  than  his 
family.  He  cannot  be  our  ideal;  neither  he  nor  his 
system  of  agriculture.  Our  ambition  is,  that  he  should 
produce  even  more  than  he  does  with  less  labour,  and 
should  enjoy  all  the  joys  of  human  life.  And  this  is 
fully  possible. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES    OF   AGRICULTURE.  67 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  if  we  put  aside  those  gardeners 
who  chiefly  cultivate  the  so-called  primeurs — straw- 
berries ripened  in  January,  and  the  like — if  we  take 
only  those  who  grow  their  crops  in  the  open  field,  and 
resort  to  frames  exclusively  for  the  earlier  days  of  the 
life  of  the  plant,  and  if  we  analyse  their  system,  we  see 
that  its  very  essence  is,  first,  to  create  for  the  plant  a 
nutritive  and  porous  soil,  which  contains  both  the  neces- 
sary decaying  organic  matter  and  the  inorganic  com- 
pounds ;  and  then  to  keep  that  soil  and  the  surrounding 
atmosphere  at  a  temperature  and  moisture  superior  to 
those  of  the  open  air.  The  whole  system  is  summed  up 
in  these  few  words.  If  the  French  maraicher  spends 
prodigies  of  labour,  intelligence,  and  imagination  in 
combining  different  kinds  of  manure,  so  as  to  make 
them  ferment  at  a  given  speed,  he  does  so  for  no  pur- 
pose but  the  above :  a  nourishing  soil,  and  a  desired 
equal  temperature  and  moisture  of  the  air  and  the  soil. 
All  his  empirical  art  is  devoted  to  the  achievement  of 
these  two  aims.  But  both  can  also  be  achieved  in  an- 
other and  much  easier  way.  The  soil  can  be  improved 
by  hand,  but  it  need  not  be  made  by  hand.  Any  soil, 
of  any  desired  composition,  can  be  made  by  machinery. 
We  already  have  manufactures  of  manure,  engines  for 
pulverising  the  phosphorites,  and  even  the  granites  of 
the  Vosges ;  and  we  shall  see  manufactures  of  loam  as 
soon  as  there  is  a  demand  for  them. 

It  is  obvious  that  at  present,  when  fraud  and  adultera- 
tion are  exercised  on  such  an  immense  scale  in  the 
manufacture  of  artificial  manure,  and  the  manufacture 
of  manure  is  considered  as  a  chemical  process,  while 
it  ought  to  be  considered  as  a  physiological  one,  the 
gardener  prefers  to  spend  an  unimaginable  amount  of 
labour  rather  than  risk  his  crop  by  the  use  of  a  pom- 
pously labelled  and  unworthy  drug.  But  that  is  a  social 
obstacle  which  depends  upon  a  want  of  knowledge 
and    a    bad    social    organisation,    not    upon    physical 


68  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

causes.*  As  to  the  necessity  of  creating  for  the  earlier 
life  of  the  plant  a  warm  soil  and  atmosphere,  forty  years 
ago  L^once  de  Lavergne  foretold  that  the  next  step  in 
culture  would  be  to  warm  the  soil.  Heating  pipes  give 
the  same  results  as  the  fermenting  manures,  but  at  a 
much  smaller  expense  of  human  labour.  And  already 
the  system  works  on  a  large  scale,  as  will  be  seen  from 
the  next  chapter.  Through  it  the  productive  powers 
of  a  given  area  of  land  are  increased  more  than  a  hun- 
dred times. 

Of  course  now,  when  the  capitalist  system  makes 
us  pay  for  everything  four  or  five  times  its  labour 
value,  we  often  spend  about  £i  for  each  square  yard 
of  a  heated  conservatory.  But  how  many  middlemen 
are  making  fortunes  on  the  wooden  sashes  imported 
from  Drontheim.?  If  we  only  could  reckon  our  ex- 
penses in  labour,  we  should  discover  to  our  amazement 
that,  thanks  to  the  use  of  machinery,  the  square  yard 
of  a  conservatory  does  not  cost  more  than  half  a  day 
of  human  labour;  and  we  will  see  presently  that  the 
Jersey  and  Guernsey  average  for  cultivating  one  acre 
under  glass  is  only  three  men  working  ten  hours  a  day. 
Therefore  the  conservatory,  which  formerly  was  a  luxury, 
is  rapidly  entering  into  the  domain  of  high  culture.  And 
we  may  foresee  the  day  when  the  glass  conservatory 
will  be  considered  as  a  necessary  appendix  to  the  field, 
both  for  the  growth  of  those  fruits  and  vegetables  which 
cannot  succeed  in  the  open  air,  and  for  the  preliminary 

*  Already  it  is  partly  removed  in  France  and  Belgium,  owing  to  the 
public  laboratories  where  analyses  of  seeds  and  manure  are  made 
free.  The  falsifications  discovered  by  these  laboratories  exceed  all  that 
could  have  been  imagined.  Manures,  containing  only  one-fifth  part  of 
the  nutritious  elements  they  were  supposed  to  contain,  were  found  to  be 
quite  common  ;  while  manures  containing  injurious  matters,  and  no 
nutritious  parts  whatever,  were  not  unfrequently  supplied  by  firms  of 
"respectable"  repute.  With  seeds,  things  stand  even  worse.  Samples 
of  grass  seeds  which  contained  20  per  cent,  of  injurious  grasses,  or  20  per 
cent,  of  grains  of  sand,  so  coloured  as  to  deceive  the  buyer,  or  even 
10  per  cent,  of  a  deadly  poisonous  grass,  passed  through  the  Ghent 
laboratory. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF   AGRICULTURE.  69 

training  of  most  cultural  plants  during  the  earlier  stages 
of  their  life. 

Home-grown  fruit  is  always  preferable  to  the  half- 
ripe  produce  which  is  imported  from  abroad,  and  the 
additional  work  required  for  keeping  a  young  plant 
under  glass  is  largely  repaid  by  the  incomparable 
superiority  of  the  crops.  As  to  the  question  of  labour, 
when  we  remember  the  really  incredible  amount  of 
labour  which  has  been  spent  on  the  Rhine  and  in 
Switzerland  for  making  the  vineyards,  their  terraces, 
and  stone  walls,  and  for  carrying  the  soil  up  the  stony 
crags,  as  also  the  amount  of  labour  which  is  spent  every 
year  for  the  culture  of  those  vineyards  and  fruit  gardens, 
we  are  inclined  to  ask,  which  of  the  two,  all  taken,  re- 
quires less  of  human  labour — a  vinery  (I  mean  the  cold 
vinery)  in  a  London  suburb,  or  a  vineyard  on  the 
Rhine,  or  on  Lake  Leman  ?  And  when  we  compare  the 
prices  realised  by  the  grower  of  grapes  round  London 
(not  those  which  are  paid  in  the  West-end  fruit  shops, 
but  those  received  by  the  grower  for  his  grapes  in 
September  and  October)  with  those  current  in  Switzer- 
land or  on  the  Rhine  during  the  same  months,  we  are 
inclined  to  maintain  that  nowhere  in  Europe,  beyond 
the  forty-fifth  degree  of  latitude,  are  grapes  grown  at 
less  expense  of  human  labour,  both  for  capital  outlay 
and  yearly  work,  than  in  the  vineries  of  the  London 
and  Brussels  suburbs.  As  to  the  always  overrated  pro- 
ductivity of  the  exporting  countries,  let  us  remember 
that  the  vine-growers  of  Southern  Europe  drink  them- 
selves an  abominable  -piquette ;  that  Marseilles  fabricates 
wine  for  home  use  out  of  dry  raisins  brought  from 
Asia;  and  that  the  Normandy  peasant  who  sends  his 
apples  to  London,  drinks  real  cider  only  on  g^eat 
festivities.  Such  a  state  of  things  will  not  last  for  ever ; 
and  the  day  is  not  far  when  we  shall  be  compelled  to 
look  to  our  own  resources  to  provide  many  of  the  things 
which  we  now  import     And  we  shall  not  be  the  worse 


70  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND    WORKSHOPS. 

for  that.  The  resources  of  science,  both  in  enlarging 
the  circle  of  our  production  and  in  new  discoveries,  are 
inexhaustible.  And  each  new  branch  of  activity  calls 
into  existence  more  and  more  new  branches,  which 
steadily  increase  the  power  of  man  over  the  forces  of 
nature.  If  we  take  all  into  consideration ;  if  we  realise 
the  progress  made  of  late  in  the  gardening  culture,  and 
the  tendency  towards  spreading  its  methods  to  the  open 
field ;  if  we  watch  the  cultural  experiments  which  are 
being  made  now — experiments  to-day  and  realities  to- 
morrow— and  ponder  over  the  resources  kept  in  store 
by  science,  we  are  bound  to  say  that  it  is  utterly  im- 
possible to  foresee  at  the  present  moment  the  limits 
as  to  the  maximum  number  of  human  beings  who  could 
draw  their  means  of  subsistence  from  a  given  area  of 
land,  or  as  to  what  a  variety  of  produce  they  could 
advantageously  grow  in  any  latitude.  Each  day  widens 
former  limits,  and  opens  new  and  wide  horizons.  All 
we  can  say  now  is,  that  600  persons  could  easily  live 
on  a  square  mile;  and  that,  with  cultural  methods 
already  used  on  a  large  scale,  1000  human  beings — not 
idlers — -living  on  1000  acres  could  easily,  without  any 
kind  of  overwork,  obtain  from  that  area  a  luxurious 
vegetable  and  animal  food,  as  well  as  the  flax,  wool,  silk, 
and  hides  necessary  for  their  clothing.  As  to  what  may 
be  obtained  under  still  more  perfect  methods — also 
known  but  not  yet  tested  on  a  large  scale — it  is  better 
to  abstain  from  any  forecast:  so  unexpected  are  the 
recent  achievements  of  intensive  culture. 

We  thus  see  that  the  over-population  fallacy  does 
not  stand  the  very  first  attempt  at  submitting  it  to  a 
closer  examination.  Those  only  can  be  horror-stricken 
at  seeing  the  population  of  this  country  increase  by  one 
individual  every  1000  seconds  who  think  of  a  hiunan 
being  as  a  mere  claimant  upon  the  stock  of  material 
wealth  of  mankind,  without  being  at  the  same  time  a 
contributor  to  that  stock     But  we,  who  see  in  each  new- 


THE   POSSIBILITIES  OF   AGRICULTURE.  7 1 

born  babe  a  future  worker  capable  of  producing  much 
more  than  his  own  share  of  the  common  stock — we 
greet  his  appearance.  We  know  that  a  crowded  popula- 
tion is  a  necessary  condition  for  permitting  man  to 
increase  the  productive  powers  of  his  labour.  We  know 
that  highly  productive  labour  is  impossible  so  long  as 
men  are  scattered,  few  in  numbers,  over  wide  territories, 
and  are  thus  unable  to  combine  together  for  the  higher 
achievements  of  civilisation.  We  know  what  an  amount 
of  labour  must  be  spent  to  scratch  the  soil  with  a  primi- 
tive plough,  to  spin  and  weave  by  hand ;  and  we  know 
also  how  much  less  labour  it  costs  to  grow  the  same 
amount  of  food  and  weave  the  same  cloth  with  the 
help  of  modern  machinery.  We  also  see  that  it  is  in- 
finitely easier  to  grow  200,000  lb.  of  food  on  one  acre 
than  to  grow  them  on  ten  acres.  It  is  all  very  well 
to  imagine  that  wheat  grows  by  itself  on  the  Russian 
steppes;  but  those  who  have  seen  how  the  peasant 
toils  in  the  "fertile"  black-earth  region  will  have  one 
desire :  that  the  increase  of  population  may  permit  the 
use  of  the  steam-digger  and  gardening  culture  in  the 
steppes;  that  it  may  permit  those  who  are  now  the 
beasts  of  burden  of  humanity  to  raise  their  backs  and  to 
become  at  last  men. 

We  must,  however,  recognise  that  there  are  a  few 
economists  fully  aware  of  the  above  truths.  They 
gladly  admit  that  Western  Europe  could  grow  much 
more  food  than  it  does ;  but  they  see  no  necessity  nor 
advantage  in  doing  so,  as  long  as  there  are  nations 
which  can  supply  food  in  exchange  for  manufactured 
goods.     Let  us  then  examine  how  far  this  view  is  correct. 

It  is  obvious  that  if  we  are  satisfied  with  merely 
stating  that  it  is  cheaper  to  bring  wheat  from  Riga  than 
to  grow  it  in  Lincolnshire,  the  whole  question  is  settled 
in  a  moment  But  is  it  so  in  reality.?  Is  it  really 
cheaper  to  have  food  from  abroad .?     And,  supposing  it 


72  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

is,  are  we  not  yet  bound  to  analyse  that  compound  result 
which  we  call  price,  rather  than  to  accept  it  as  a  supreme 
and  blind  ruler  of  our  actions  ? 

We  know,  for  instance,  how  French  agriculture  is 
burdened  by  taxation.  And  yet,  if  we  compare  the 
prices  of  articles  of  food  in  France,  which  herself  grows 
most  of  them,  with  the  prices  in  this  country,  which  im^ 
ports  them,  we  find  no  difference  in  favour  of  the  import- 
ing country.  On  the  contrary,  the  balance  is  rather  in 
favour  of  France,  and  it  decidedly  was  so  for  wheat 
until  the  new  protective  tariff  was  introduced.  As  soon 
as  one  goes  out  of  Paris  (where  the  prices  are  swollen 
by  a  heavy  octroi)^  one  finds  that  every  home  produce 
is  cheaper  in  France  than  it  is  in  England,  and  that  the 
prices  decrease  further  when  we  go  farther  East  on  the 
Continent. 

There  is,  however,  another  feature  still  more  unfavour- 
able for  this  country :  namely,  the  enormous  development 
of  the  class  of  middlemen  who  stand  between  the  im- 
porter and  the  home  producer  on  the  one  side  and  the 
consumer  on  the  other.  We  have  lately  heard  a  good 
deal  about  the  quite  disproportionate  part  of  the  prices 
we  pay  which  goes  into  the  middleman's  pockets.  We 
have  all  heard  of  the  East-end  clergyman  who  was 
compelled  to  become  butcher  in  order  to  save  his 
parishioners  from  the  greedy  middleman.  We  read  in 
the  papers  that  many  farmers  of  the  midland  counties 
do  not  realise  more  than  gd.  for  a  pound  of  butter,  while 
the  customer  pays  from  is.  6d.  to  is.  8d  ;  and  that  from 
I  Xd.  to  2d.  for  the  quart  of  milk  is  all  that  the  Cheshire 
farmers  can  get,  while  we  pay  4d.  for  the  adulterated, 
and  5d.  for  the  unadulterated  milk.  An  analysis  of  the 
Covent  Garden  prices  and  a  comparison  of  the  same 
with  retail  prices,  which  was  made  some  years  ago  in 
the  Daily  News,  proved  that  the  customer  pays  for 
vegetables  at  the  rate  of  6d.  to  is.,  and  sometimes  more, 
for   each   penny  realised   by  the   grower.       But   in   a 


THE   POSSIBILITIES  OF   AGRICULTURE.  73 

country  of  imported  food  it  must  be  so  :  the  grower  who 
himself  sells  his  own  produce  disappears  from  its 
markets,  and  in  his  place  appears  the  middleman.* 
If  we  move,  however,  towards  the  East,  and*  go  to 
Belgium,  Germany,  and  Russia,  we  find  that  the  cost  of 
living  is  more  and  more  reduced,  so  that  finally  we  find 
that  in  Russia,  which  remains  still  agricultural,  wheat 
costs  one-half  or  two-thirds  of  its  London  prices,  and 
meat  is  sold  throughout  the  provinces  at  from  five  to 
ten  farthings  (kopecks)  the  pound.  And  we  may  there- 
fore hold  that  it  is  not  yet  proved  at  all  that  it  is  cheaper 
to  live  on  imported  food  than  to  grow  it  ourselves. 

But  if  we  analyse  frice,  and  make  a  distinction 
between  its  different  elements,  the  disadvantage  becomes 
still  more  apparent.  If  we  compare,  for  instance,  the 
costs  of  growing  wheat  in  this  country  and  in  Russia, 
we  are  told  that  in  the  United  Kingdom  the  hundred- 
weight of  wheat  cannot  be  grown  at  less  than  8s.  ^d. ; 
while  in  Russia  the  costs  of  production  of  the  same 
hundredweight  are  estimated  at  from  3  s.  6d.  to  4s.  pd.t 
The  difference  is  enormous,  and  it  would  still  remain 
very  great  even  if  we  admit  that  there  is  some  exag- 
geration in  the  former  figure.  But  why  this  difference  ? 
Are  the  Russian  labourers  paid  so  much  less  for  their 

•  A  few  winters  ago,  a  friend  of  mine,  who  lived  in  a  London  suburb, 
used  to  get  his  butter  from  Bavaria /^r  parcel  post.  It  cost  him  los.  the 
eleven  pounds  in  Bavaria,  parcel  post  inclusive  (2s.  2d.),  6d.  the  money 
order,  and  2id.  the  letter;  total,  less  than  lis.  Butter  of  an  inferior 
quality  (out  of  comparison),  with  10  to  15  per  cent,  of  water  inclusive, 
was  sold  in  London  at  is.  6d.  the  lb.  at  the  same  time. 

t  The  data  for  the  calculation  of  the  cost  of  production  of  wheat  in 
this  country  are  those  given  by  the  Mark  Lane  Express;  they  will  be 
found  in  a  digestible  form  in  an  article  on  wheat-growing  in  the  Quarterly 
Review  for  April,  1887,  and  in  W.  E.  Bear's  book,  The  British  Farmer 
and  his  Competitors,  London  (Casseli),  1888.  Although  they  are  a  little 
above  the  average,  the  crop  taken  for  the  calculations  is  also  above  the 
average.  A  similar  inquiry  has  been  made  on  a  large  scale  by  the 
Russian  Provincial  Assemblies,  and  the  whole  is  summed  up  in  an  elabo- 
rate paper,  in  the  Vyestnik  Promyshlmnosti,  No.  49,  1887.  To  compare 
ihe  paper  kopecks  with  pence  I  took  the  rouble  at  -^  of  its  nominal 
value:  such  was  its  average  quotation  during  the  year  1886.  I  took  475 
English  lb.  in  the  quarter  of  wheat. 


74  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

work  ?  Their  money  wages  surely  are  much  lower,  but 
the  difference  is  equalised  as  soon  as  we  reckon  their 
wages  in  produce.  The  twelve  shillings  a  week  of  the 
British  agricultural  labourer  represents  the  same  amount 
of  wheat  in  Britain  as  4he  six  shillings  a  week  of  the 
Russian  labourer  represents  in  Russia,*  not  to  say  a 
word  about  the  cheapness  of  meat  in  Russia  and  the 
low  house  rent.  The  Russian  labourer  is  thus  paid  the 
same  amount  of  the  produce  grown  as  he  is  paid  here. 
As  to  the  supposed  prodigious  fertility  of  the  soil  in  the 
Russian  prairies,  it  is  a  fallacy.  Crops  of  from  sixteen 
to  twenty-three  bushels  per  acre  are  considered  good 
crops  in  Russia,  while  the  average  hardly  reaches  thir- 
teen bushels,  even  in  the  corn-exporting  parts  of  the 
empire.  Besides,  the  amount  of  labour  which  is  neces- 
sary to  grow  wheat  in  Russia  with  no  thrashing- 
machines,  with  a  plough  dragged  by  a  horse  hardly 
worth  the  name,  with  no  roads  for  transport,  and  so 
on,  is  certainly  much  greater  than  the  amount  of  labour 
which  is  necessary  to  grow  the  same  amount  of  wheat 
in  Western  Europe. 

When  brought  to  the  London  market,  Russian  wheat 
was  sold  in  1887  at  31s.  the  quarter,  while  it  appeared 
from  the  same  Mark  Lane  Express  figures  that  the 
quarter  of  wheat  could  not  be  grown  in  this  country 
at  less  than  36s.  8d.,  even  if  the  straw  be  sold,  which  is 
not  always  the  case.  But  the  difference  of  the  land  rent 
in  both  countries  would  alone  account  for  the  difference 
of  prices.       In  the  wheat  belt  of  Russia,   where  the 


*  It  results  from  the  detailed  figures  given  by  the  Agricultural  Depart- 
ment {The  Year  1885  with  regard  to  Agriculture,  vol.  ii.),  that  the 
average  wages  of  the  agricultural  labourers  were  from  180  kopecks  a 
week  in  middle  Russia  to  330  kopecks  in  the  wheat-exporting  belt  (from 
3s.  gd.  to  6s.  6d.),  and  from  5s.  6d.  to  los.  5d.  during  the  harvest.  Since 
1885  the  wages  went  up  in  both  countries ;  the  average  wages  of  the 
English  labourer  were  given  for  i8g6  at  13s.  yd.  If  the  Russian  labourer 
is  so  miserable  in  comparison  with  the  English,  it  is  due  chiefly  to  the 
exceedingly  high  personal  taxation  and  several  other  causes  which  cannot 
be  here  treated  incidentally. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF   AGRICULTURE.  75 

average  rent  stands  at  about  12s.  per  acre,  and  the  crop 
is  from  fifteen  to  twenty  bushels,  the  rent  amounts  to 
from  3s.  6d.  to  5s.  8d.  in  the  costs  of  production  of  each 
quarter  of  Russian  wheat ;  while  in  this  country,  where 
the  rent  and  taxes  are  valued  (in  the  Mark  Lane  Ex- 
press figures)  at  no  less  than  40s.  per  each  wheat- 
growing  acre,  and  the  crop  is  taken  at  thirty  bushels, 
the  rent  amounts  to  los.  in  the  costs  of  production  of 
each  quarter.*  But  even  if  we  take  only  30s.  per  acre 
of  rent  and  taxes,  and  an  average  crop  of  twenty-eight 
bushels,  we  still  have  8s.  8d.  out  of  the  sale  price  of 
each  quarter  of  wheat,  >yhich  goes  to  the  landlord  and 
the  State.  If  it  costs  so  much  more  in  money  to  grow 
wheat  in  this  country  while  the  amount  of  labour  is  so 
much  less  in  this  country  than  in  Russia,  it  is  due  to  the 
very  great  height  of  the  land  rents  attained  during  the 
years  i860- 1880.  But  this  growth  itself  was  due  to  the 
facilities  for  realising  large  profits  on  the  sale  of  manu- 
factured goods  abroad.  The  false  condition  of  British 
rural  economy,  not  the  infertihty  of  the  soil,  is  thus  the 
chief  cause  of  the  Russian  competitibn. 

Much  more  ought  to  be  said  with  regard  to  the 
American  competition,  and  therefore  I  must  refer  the 
reader  to  the  remarkable  series  of  articles  dealing  with 
the  whole  of  the  subject  which  Schaeffle  published  in 
1886  in  the  Zeitschrift  fur  die  gesammie  Staaiswis- 
senschafty  and  to  a  most  elaborate  article  on  the  costs 
of  growing  wheat  all  over  the  world  which  appeared  in 
April,  1887,  in  the  Quarterly  Review.  The  conclusions 
of  these  two  writers  are  fully  corroborated  by  the  yearly 
reports  of  the  American  Board  of  Agriculture,  and 
Schaeffle's  previsions  were  fully  supported  by  the  subse- 

*  The  rents  have  declined  since  1887,  but  the  prices  of  wheat  also  went 
down.  It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  as  the  best  acres  only  are  selected 
for  wheat-growing,  the  rent  for  each  acre  upon  which  wheat  is  grown 
must  be  taken  higher  than  the  average  rent  per  acre  in  a  farm  of  from 
aoo  to  300  acres. 


76  FIELDS,  FACTORIES  AND  WORKSHOPS. 

quent  reports  of  Mr.  J.  R.  Dodge.  It  appears  from 
these  works  that  the  fertility  of  the  American  soil  had 
been  grossly  exaggerated,  as  the  masses  of  wheat  which 
America  sends  to  Europe  from  its  north-western  farms 
are  grown  on  a  soil  the  natural  fertility  of  which  is  not 
higher,  and  often  lower,  than  the  average  fertility  of  the 
unmanured  European  soil.  The  Casselton  farm  in 
Dakota,  with  its  twenty  bushels  per  acre,  is  an  excep- 
tion ;  while  the  average  crop  of  the  chief  wheat-growing 
States  in  the  West  is  only  from  eleven  to  twelve  bushels. 
If  we  wish  to  find  a  fertile  soil  in  America,  and  crops 
of  from  thirty  to  forty  bushels,  we  must  go  to  the  old 
Eastern  States,  where  the  soil  is  made  by  man's  hands.* 
But  we  shall  not  find  it  in  the  Territories,  which  are 
satisfied  with  crops  of  from  eight  to  nine  bushels.  The 
same  is  true  with  regard  to  the  American  supplies  of 
meat.  Schaeffle  has  pointed  out  that  the  gpreat  mass  of 
live  stock  which  we  see  in  the  census  of  cattle  in  the 
States  is  not  reared  in  the  prairies,  but  in  the  stables 
of  the  farms,  in  the  same  way  as  in  Europe ;  as  to  the 
prairies,  we  find  on  them  only  one-eleventh  part  of  the 
American  horned  cattle,  one-fifth  of  the  sheep  and  one- 
twenty-first  of  the  pigs.t  "  Natural  fertility  "  being  thus 
out  of  question,  we  must  look  for  social  causes ;  and  we 
have  them,  for  the  Western  States,  in  the  cheapness  of 
land  and  a  proper  organisation  of  production;  and  for 
the  Eastern  States  in  the  rapid  progress  of  intensive 
high  farming. 

It  is  evident  that  the  methods  of  culture  must  vary 
according  to  different  conditions.     In  the  vast  prairies 

*  L.  de  Lavergne  pointed  out  as  far  back  as  forty  years  ago  that  the 
States  are  the  chief  importers  of  guano.  In  1854  they  imported  it  almost 
to  the  same  amount  as  this  country,  and  they  had,  moreover,  sixty-two 
manufactories  of  guano  which  supplied  it  to  the  amount  of  sixteen  times 
the  imports.  Compare  also  Ronna's  Uagriculture  aux  Etats  Unis,  1881 ; 
Lecouteux,  Le  hie ;  and  J.  R.  Dodge's  Annual  Report  of  the  American 
Department  of  Agriculture  for  1885  and  1886.  Schaeffle's  work  is  also 
summed  up  in  SchmoUer's  Jahrbuch. 

f  See  also  J.  R.  Dodge's  Farm  and  Factory,  New  York,  1884 


THE  POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE.  TJ 

of  North  America,  where  land  could  be  bought  from  8s. 
to  40s.  the  acre,  and  where  spaces  of  from  100  to  150 
square  miles  in  one  block  could  be  given  to  wheat 
culture,  special  methods  of  culture  were  applied  and 
the  results  were  excellent  Land  was  bought — not 
rented.  In  the  autumn,  whole  studs  of  horses  were 
brought,  and  the  tilling  and  sowing  were  done  with  the 
aid  of  formidable  ploughs  and  sowing  machines.  Then 
the  horses  were  sent  to  graze  in  the  mountains;  the 
men  were  dismissed,  and  one  man,  occasionally  two  or 
three,  remained  to  winter  on  the  farm.  In  the  spring 
the  owners'  agents  began  to  beat  the  inns  for  hundreds 
of  miles  rofind,  and  engaged  labourers  and  tramps,  both 
freely  supplied  by  Europe,  for  the  crop.  Battalions  of 
men  were  marched  to  the  wheat  fields,  and  were 
camped  there ;  the  horses  were  brought  from  the  moun- 
tains, and  in  a  week  or  two  the  crop  was  cut,  thrashed, 
winnowed,  put  iu  sacks,  by  specially  invented  machines, 
and  sent  to  the  next  elevator,  or  directly  to  the  ships 
which  carried  it  to  Europe.  Whereupon  the  men  were 
disbanded  again,  the  horses  were  sent  back  to  the 
grazing  grounds,  or  sold,  and  again  only  a  couple  of 
men  remained  on  the  farmu 

The  crop  from  each  acre  was  small,  but  the  machinery 
was  so  perfected  that  in  this  way  300  days  of  one  man's 
labour  produced  from  200  to  300  quarters  of  wheat ;  in 
other  words — the  curea  of  land  being  of  no  account — 
every  man  produced  in  one  day  his  yearly  bread  food 
(eight  and  a  half  bushels  of  wheat) ;  and  taking  into 
account  all  subsequent  labour,  it  was  calculated  that 
the  work  of  300  men  in  one  single  day  delivered  to  the 
consumer  at  Chicago  the  flour  that  is  required  for  the 
yearly  food  of  250  persons.  Twelve  hours  and  a  half 
of  work  are  thus  required  in  Chicago  to  supply  one  man 
with  his  yearly  provision  of  wheat-flour. 

Under  the  special  conditions  offered  in  the  Far  West 
this  certainly  was  an  appropriate  method  for  incre^'sing 


JS  )  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

all  of  a  sudden  the  wheat  supplies  of  mankind  It 
answered  its  purpose  when  large  territories  of  unoccupied 
land  were  opened  to  enterprise.  But  it  could  not  answer 
for  ever.  Under  such  a  system  of  culture  the  soil  was 
soon  exhausted,  the  crop  declined,  and  intensive  agri- 
culture (which  aims  at  high  crops  on  a  hmited  area)  had 
soon  to  be  resorted  to.  Such  was  the  case  in  Iowa  in 
the  year  1878.  Up  till  then,  Iowa  was  an  emporium 
for  wheat-growing  on  the  lines  just  indicated.  But  the 
soil  was  already  exhausted,  and  when  a  disease  came 
the  wheat  plants  had  no  force  to  resist  it.  In  a  few 
weeks  nearly  all  the  wheat  crop,  which  was  expected  to 
beat  all  previous  records,  was  lost ;  eight  to  ten  bushels 
per  acre  of  bad  wheat  were  all  that  could  be  cropped. 
The  result  was  that  "  mammoth  farms  "  had  to  be  broken 
up  into  small  farms,  and  that  the  Iowa  farmers  (after  a 
terrible  crisis  of  short  duration — everything  is  rapid  in 
America)  took  to  a  more  intensive  culture.  Now,  they 
are  not  behind  France  in  wheat  culture,  as  they  already 
grow  an  average  of  sixteen  and  a  half  bushels  per  acre 
on  an  area  of  more  than  2,000,000  acres,  and  they  will 
soon  win  ground.  Somehow,  with  the  aid  of  manure 
and  improved  methods  of  farming  they  compete  ad- 
mirably with  the  mammoth  farms  of  the  Far  West 

/^  In  fact,  over  and  over  again  it  was  pointed  out,  by 
Schaeffle,  Semler,  Oetken,  and  many  other  writers,  that 
the  force  of  "  American  competition  "  is  not  in  its  mam- 
moth farms,  but  in  the  countless  small  farms  upon  which 
wheat  is  grown  in  the  same  way  as  it  is  grown  in 
Europe,  i.e.y  with  manuring,  but  with  a  better  organised 

l^roduction  and  facilities  for  sale,  and  without  being  com- 
pelled to  pay  to  the  landlord  a  toll  of  one-third  part,  or 
more,  of  the  selling  price  of  each  quarter  of  wheat 
However,  it  was  only  after  I  had  myself  made  a  tour 
in  the  prairies  of  Manitoba  that  I  could  realise  the  full 
truth  of  the  just-mentioned  views.  The  15,000,000  to 
20,000,000  bushels  of  wheat,  which  are  exported  every 


THE   POSSIBILITIES  OF   AGRICULTURE.  79 

year  from  Manitoba,  are  grown  almost  entirely  in  farms 
of  one  or  two  "quarter-sections,"  i.e.y  of  160  and  320 
acres.  The  ploughing  is  made  in  the  usual  way,  and  in' 
an  immense  majority  of  cases  the  farmers  buy  the  reap- 
ing and  binding  machines  (the  "  binders  ")  by  associating 
in  groups  of  four.  The  thrashing  machine  is  rented  by 
the  farmer  for  one  or  two  days,  and  the  farmer  carts  his 
wheat  to  the  elevator  with  his  own  horses,  either  to 
sell  it  immediately  or  to  keep  it  at  the  elevator  if  he  is 
in  no  immediate  need  of  money  and  hopes  to  get  a 
higher  price  in  one  month  or  two.  In  short,  in  Mani- 
toba one  is  especially  struck  with  the  fact  that,  even 
^under  a  system  of  keen  competition,  the  middle-size  farm 
admirably  well  competes  with  the  mammoth  farm,  and 
that  it  is  not  manufacturing  wheat  on  a  grand  scale 
which  pays  best.  It  is  also  most  interesting  to  note  that 
thousands  and  thousands  of  farmers  produce  mountains 
of  wheat  in  the  Canadian  province  of  Toronto  and  in 
the  Eastern  States,  although  the  land  is  not  prairie- 
land  at  all,  and  the  farms  are,  as  a  rule,  small. 

The  force  of  "  American  competition  "  is  thus  not  in 
the  possibility  of  having  hundreds  of  acres  of  wheat  in 
one  block.  It  lies  in  the  ownership  of  the  land,  in  a 
system  of  culture  which  is  appropriate  to  the  character 
of  the  country,  in  a  widely  developed  spirit  of  associ- 
ation, and,  finally,  in  a  number  of  institutions  and 
customs  intended  to  lift  the  agriculturist  and  his  pro- 
fession to  a  high  level  which  is  unknown  in  Europe. 

In  Europe  we  do  not  realise  at  all  what  is  done  in 
the  States  and  Canada  in  the  interests  of  agriculture. 
In  every  American  State,  and  in  every  distinct  region 
of~Canada,  there  is  an  experimental  farm,  and  all  the 
work  of  preliminary  experiment  upon  new  varieties  of 
wheat,  oats,  barley,  fodder  and  fruit,  which  the  farmer 
has  mostly  to  make  himself  in  Europe,  is  made  under 
the  best  scientific  conditions  at  the  experimental  farms, 
on  a  small  scale  first  and  on  a  large  sc9.le  ip,e^t     Th.Q 


8o  FIELDS,  FACTORIES   AND  WORKSHOPS. 

results  of  all  these  researches  and  experiments  are  not 
merely  rendered  accessible  to  the  farmer  who  would 
like  to  know  them,  but  they  are  brought  to  his  know- 
ledge, and,  so  to  speak,  are  forced  upon  his  attention 
by  every  possible  means.  The  "Bulletins"  of  the  ex- 
perimental stations  are  distributed  in  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  copies;  visits  to  the  farms  are  organised 
in  such  a  way  that  thousands  of  farmers  should  inspect 
the  stations  every  year,  and  be  shown  by  specialists  the 
results  obtained,  either  with  new  varieties  of  plants  or 
under  various  new  methods  of  treatment.  Correspon- 
dence is  carried  on  with  the  farmers  on  such  a  scale  that, 
for  instance,  at  Ottawa,  the  experimental  farm  sends  out 
every  year  a  hundred  thousand  letters  and  packets. 
Every  farmer  can  get,  free  of  charge  and  postage,  three 
pounds  of  seed  of  any  variety  of  cereals,  out  of  which  he 
can  get  next  year  the  necessary  seed  for  sowing  several 
acres.  And,  finally,  in  every  small  and  remote  township 
there  are  held  farmers*  meetings,  at  which  special  lec- 
turers, who  are  sent  out  by  the  experimental  farms  or 
the  local  agricultural  societies,  discuss  with  the  farmers 
in  an  informal  way  the  results  of  last  year's  experiments 
and  discoveries  relative  to  every  branch  of  agfriculture, 
horticulture,  cattle-breeding,  dairying  and  agricultural 
co-operation.* 

American  agriculture  really  offers  an  imposing  sight. 
Not  in  the  wheat  fields  of  the  far  West,  which  soon 
will  become  a  thing  of  the  past,  but  in  the  development 
of  rational  agriculture  and  the  forces  which  promote 
it  Read  the  description  of  an  agricultural  exhibition, 
'^he.  State's  fair,"  in  some  small  town  of  Iowa,  with  its 
70,000  farmers  camping  with  their  families  in  tents 
during  the  fair's  week,  studying,  learning,  buying  and 
selling,  and  enjoying  life.     You  see  a  na(ionaJ_Jete^  and 

•Some  additional  information  on  this  subject  will  be  found  in  the 
articles  of  mine;  "  Some  Resources  of  Canada,"  and  "Recent  Science," 
in  The  Nineteenth  Century,  January,  1898,  and  October,  1897. 


THE    POSSIBILITIES   OF   AGRICULTURE.  8 1 

youjeel  that  you  deal  with  a  nation  in  which  agriculture 
jsjn  respect  Or  read  the  publications  of  the  scores  of 
experimental  stations,  whose  reports  are  distributed 
broadcast  over  the  country,  and  are  read  by  the  farmers 
and  discussed  at  countless  "  farmers'  meetings  ".  Con- 
sult the  "  Transactions  "  and  "  Bulletins  "  of  the  count- 
less agricultural  societies,  not  royal  but  popular;  study 
the  grand  enterprises  for  irrigation ;  and  you  will  feel 
that  American  agriculture  is  a  real  force,  imbued  with 
life,  which  no  longer  fears  mammoth  farms,  and  needs 
not  to  cry  like  a  child  for  protection. 

"  Intensive  "  agriculture  and  gardening  are  already  by 
this  time  as  much  a  feature  of  the  treatment  of  the  soil 
in  America  as  they  are  in  Belgium.  As  far  back  as 
the  year  1880,  nine  States,  among  which  were  Georgia, 
Virginia  and  the  two  Carolinas,  bought  ;^5, 7 50,000  worth 
of  artificial  manures ;  and  we  are  told  that  by  this  time 
the  use  of  artificial  manure  has  immensely  spread 
towards  the  West.  In  Iowa,  where  mammoth  farms 
used  to  exist  twenty  years  ago,  sown  grass  is  already 
in  use,  and  it  is  highly  recommended  by  both  the  Iowa 
Agricultural  Institute  and  the  numerous  local  agricul- 
tural papers ;  while  at  the  agricultural  competitions  the 
highest  awards  are  given,  not  for  extensive  farming, 
but  for  high  crops  on  small  areas.  Thus,  at  a  recent 
competition  in  which  hundreds  of  farmers  took  part, 
the  first  ten  prizes  were  awarded  to  ten  farmers  who  had 
grown,  on  three  acres  each,  from  262  to  346^  bushels 
of  Indian  com,  in  other  words  from  8y  to  ii§  bushels 
to  the  acre.  This  shows  where  the  ambition  of  the 
Iowa  farmer  goes.  In  Minnesota  the  prizes  were  given 
two  years  ago  for  crops  of  300  to  11 20  bushels  of  pota- 
toes to  the  acre,  i.e.,  from  eight  and  a  quarter  to  thirty- 
one  tons  to  the  acre,  while  the  average  potato  crop  in 
Great  Britain  is  only  six  tons. 

At  the  same  time  market-gardening  is  immensely 
extending  in  America.   In  the  market-gardens  of  Florida 

6 


82  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

we  see  such  crops  as  445  to  600  bushels  of  onions  per 
acre,  400  bushels  of  tomatoes,  700  bushels  of  sweet 
potatoes,  which  testify  to  a  high  development  of  culture. 
As  to  the  "truck  farms"  (market-gardening  for  export 
by  steamer  and  rail),  they  covered,  in  1892,  400,000 
acres,  and  the  fruit  farms  in  the  suburbs  of  Norfolk, 
in  Virginia,  were  described  by  Prof.  Ch.  Baltet  *  as  real 
models  of  that  sort  of  culture — a  very  high  testimony 
in  the  mouth  of  a  French  gardener  who  himself  comes 
from  the  model  marais  of  Troyes. 

And  while  people  in  London  continue  to  pay  almost 
all  the  year  round  twopence  for  a  lettuce  (very  often  im- 
ported from  Paris),  they  have  at  Chicago  and  Boston 
those  unique  establishments  in  the  world  where  lettuces 
are  grown  in  immense  greenhouses  with  the  aid  of 
electric  light ;  and  we  must  not  forget  that  although 
the  discovery  of  "  electric "  growth  is  European  (it  is 
due  to  Siemens),  it  was  at  the  Cornell  University  that  it 
was  proved  by  a  series  of  experiments  that  electric 
light  is  an  admirable  aid  for  forwarding  the  g^rowth  of 
the  green  parts  of  the  plant. 

In  short,  America,  which  formerly  took  the  lead  in 
bringing  "  extensive "  agriculture  to  perfection,  now 
takes  the  lead  in  "  intensive,"  or  forced,  agriculture  as 
well.  In  this  adaptability  lies  the  real  force  of  American 
competition. 

•  UHorttculture  dans  les  cinq  Parties  du  Monde.     Paris,  1895. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE— (con^m«*<0. 

The  doctrine  of  Malthus — Progress  in  wheat-growing — East  Flanders — 
Jersey — Potato  crops,  past  and  present — Irrigation — Major  Hallet'i 
experiments — Planted  wheat. 

Few  books  have  exercised  so  pernicious  an  influence 
upon  the  general  development  of  economic  thought  as 
Malthus's  Essay  on  the  Principle  of  Population  exer- 
cised for  three  consecutive  generations.  It  appeared  at 
the  right  time,  like  all  books  which  have  had  any  in- 
fluence at  all,  and  it  summed  up  ideas  already  current 
in  the  minds  of  the  wealth-possessing  minority.  It  was 
precisely  when  the  ideas  of  equality  and  liberty, 
awakened  by  the  French  and  American  revolutions, 
were  still  permeating  the  minds  of  the  poor,  while  the 
richer  classes  had  become  tired  of  their  amateur  excur- 
sions into  the  same  domains,  that  Malthus  came  to 
assert,  in  reply  to  Godwin,  that  no  equality  is  possible ; 
that  the  poverty  of  the  many  is  not  due  to  institutions, 
but  is  a  natural  law.  Population,  he  wrote,  grows  too 
rapidly  and  the  new-comers  find  no  room  at  the  feast  of 
nature ;  and  that  law  cannot  be  altered  by  any  change 
of  institutions.  He  thus  gave  to  the  rich  a  kind  of 
scientific  argument  against  the  ideas  of  equality ;  and 
we  know  that  though  all  dominion  is  based  upon 
force,  force  itself  begins  to  totter  as  soon  as  it  is  no 
longer  supported  by  a  firm  belief  in  its  own  rightfulness. 

(83) 


84  FIELDS,  FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

As  to  the  poorer  classes — who  always  resent  the  influ- 
ence of  ideas  circulating  at  a  given  time  amid  the 
wealthier  classes — it  deprived  them  of  the  very  hope  of 
improvement ;  it  made  them  sceptical  as  to  the  promises- 
of  the  social  reformers;  and  to  this  day  the  most  ad- 
vanced reformers  entertain  doubts  as  to  the  possibility 
of  satisfying  the  needs  of  all,  in  case  there  should  be 
a  claim  for  their  satisfaction,  and  a  temporary  welfare 
of  the  labourers  resulted  m  a  sudden  increase  of 
population. 

Science,  down  to  the  present  day,  remains  permeated 
with  Malthus's  teachings.  Political  economy  continues* 
to  base  its  reasoning  upon  a  tacit  admission  of  the  im- 
possibility of  rapidly  increasing  the  productive  powers 
of  a  nation,  and  of  thus  giving  satisfaction  to  all  wants. 
That  postulate  stands,  undiscussed,  in  the  background 
of  whatever  political  economy,  classical  or  socialist,  has 
to  say  about  exchange  value,  wages,  sale  of  labour 
force,  rent,  exchange,  and  consumption.  Political 
economy  never  rises  above  the  hypothesis  of  a  limited 
and  ins'ifficient  supply  of  the  necessaries  of  life;  it  takes  it 
for  granted.  And  all  theories  connected  with  political 
economy  retain  the  same  erroneous  principle.  Nearly 
all  socialists,  too,  admit  the  postulate.  Nay,  even  in 
biology  (so  deeply  interwoven  now  with  sociology)  we 
have  recently  seen  the  theory  of  variability  of  species 
borrowing  a  quite  imexpected  support  from  its  having 
been  connected  by  Darwin  and  Wallace  with  Malthus's 
fundamental  idea,  that  the  natural  resources  must  in- 
evitably fail  to  supply  the  means  of  existence  for  the 
rapidly  multiplying  animals  and  plants.  In  short,  we 
may  say  that  Malthus's  theory,  by  shaping  into  a  pseudo- 
scientific  form  the  secret  desires  of  the  wealth-possessing 
classes,  became  the  foundation  of  a  whole  system  of 
practical  philosophy,  which  permeates  the  minds  of  both 
the  educated  and  uneducated,  and  reacts  Cas  practical 


THE   POSSIBILITIES  OF   AGRICULTURE.  85 

philosophy  always  does)  upon  the  theoretical  philosophy 
of  our  century. 

True,  the  formidable  growth  of  the  productive  powers 
of  man  in  the  industrial  field,  since  he  tamed  steam 
and  electricity,  has  somewhat  shaken  Malthus's  doctrine. 
Industrial  wealth  has  grown  at  a  rate  which  no  possible 
increase  of  population  could  attain,  and  it  can  grow  with 
still  greater  speed.  But  agriculture  is  still  considered  a 
stronghold  of  the  Malthusian  pseudo-philosophy.  The 
recent  achievements  of  agriculture  and  horticulture  are 
not  sufficiently  well  known ;  and  while  our  gardeners 
defy  climate  and  latitude,  acclimatise  sub-tropical  plants, 
raise  several  crops  a  year  instead  of  one,  and  themselves 
make  the  soil  they  want  for  each  special  culture,  the 
economists  nevertheless  continue  saying  that  the  surface 
of  the  soil  is  limited,  and  still  more  its  productive 
powers ;  they  still  maintain  that  a  population  which 
should  double  each  thirty  years  would  soon  be  con- 
fronted by  a  lack  of  the  necessaries  of  life! 

A  few  data  to  illustrate  what  can  be  obtained  from 
the  soil  were  given  in  the  preceding  chapter.  But  the 
deeper  one  goes  into  the  subject  the  more  new  and  strik- 
ing data  does  he  discover,  and  the  more  Malthus's  fears 
appear  groundless. 

To  begin  with  an  instance  taken  from  culture  in  the 
open  field — namely,  that  of  wheat — ^we  come  upon  the 
following  interesting  fact  While  we  are  so  often  told 
that  wheat- growing  does  not  pay,  and  England  conse- 
quently reduces  from  year  to  year  the  area  of  its  wheat 
fields,  the  French  peasants  steadily  increase  the  area 
under  wheat,  and  the  greatest  increase  is  due  to  those 
peasant  families  which  themselves  cultivate  the  land 
they  own.  Since  the  end  of  the  last  century  they  have 
nearly  doubled  both  the  area  under  wheat,  as  well  as  the 
returns  from  each  acre,  so  as  to  increase  almost  fourfgld 


S6 


FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOrS. 


the  amount  of  wheat  grown  in  France.*  At  the  same 
time  the  population  has  only  increased  by  41  per  cent., 
so  that  the  ratio  of  increase  of  the  wheat  crop  has  been 
six  times  greater  than  the  ratio  of  increase  of  popula- 
tion, although  agriculture  has  been  hampered  all  the 
time  by  a  series  of  serious  obstacles — taxation,  military 
service,  poverty  of  the  peasantry,  and  even,  up  to  1884, 
a  severe  prohibition  of  all  sorts  of  association  among 
the  peasants.  It  must  also  be  remarked  that  during 
the  same  hundred  years,  and  even  within  the  last  fifty 
years,  market-gardening,  fruit-culture  and  culture  for 
industrial  purposes  have  immensely  developed  in  France, 
so  that  there  would  be  no  exaggeration  in  saying  that 
the  French  obtain  now  from  their  soil  at  least  six  or 
seven  times  more  than  they  obtained  a  hundred  years 
ago.  The  "  means  of  existence  "  drawn  from  the  soil 
have  thus  grown  about  fifteen  times  quicker  than  the 
population. 

But  the  ratio  of  progress  in  agriculture  is  still  better 
seen  from  the  rise  of  the  standard  of  requirement  as 
regards  cultivation  of  land.  Some  thirty  years  ago  the 
French  considered  a  crop  quite  good  when  it  yielded 
twenty-two  bushels  to  the  acre ;  but  with  the  same  soil 
the  present  requirement  is  at  least  thirty-three  bushels, 
while  in  the  best  soils  the  crop  is  good  only  when  it 
yields  from  forty-three  to  forty-eight  bushels,  and  occa- 
sionally the  product  is  as  much  as  fifty-five  bushels  to  the 
acre.t     There  are  whole  countries — Hesse,  for  example 

*  The  researches  of  Tisserand  may  be  summed  up  as  follows : — 


Year. 

Population 

in 

millions. 

Acres  under 
wheat. 

Average  crop 
in  bushels 
per  acre. 

Wheat  crop  in 
bushels. 

1789 

1831-41 

1882-88 

27-0 

33*4 

38-2 

9,884,000 
13,224,000 
17,198,000 

9 

15 
18 

87,980,000 
194,225,000 
311,619,000 

+  Qrgndeau,  Etudes  agronomiques,  2^  sdrie.     Paris,  x888. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF  AGRICULTURE.  8/ 

— which  are  satisfied  only  when  the  average  crop  attains 
thirty-seven  bushels ;  while  the  experimental  farms  of 
Central  France  produce  from  year  to  year,  over  large 
areas,  forty-one  bushels  to  the  acre,  and  a  number  of 
farms  in  Northern  France  regularly  yield,  year  after 
year,  from  fifty-five  to  sixty-eight  bushels  to  the  acre. 
Occasionally  even  so  much  as  eighty  bushels  have  been 
obtained  upon  limited  areas  under  special  care  *  In 
fact,  Prof.  Grandeau  considers  it  proved  that  by  com- 
bining a  series  of  such  operations  as  the  selection  of 
seeds,  sowing  in  rows,  and  proper  manuring,  the  crops 
can  be  largely  increased  over  the  best  present  average, 
while  the  cost  of  production  can  be  reduced  by  50  per 
cent,  by  the  use  of  inexpensive  machinery ;  to  say 
nothing  of  costly  machines  like  the  steam  digger,  or  the 
pulverisers  which  make  the  soil  required  for  each  special 
culture.  They  are  now  occasionally  resorted  to  here 
and  there,  and  they  surely  will  come  into  general  use  as 
soon  as  humanity  feels  the  need  of  largely  increasing  its 
agricultural  product. 

When  we  bear  in  mind  the  very  unfavourable  con- 
ditions in  which  agriculture  stands  now  all  over  the 
world,  we  must  not  expect  to  find  considerable  progress 
in  its  methods  realised  over  wide  regions ;  we  must  be 
satisfied  with  noting  the  advance  accomplished  in  sepa- 
rate, especially  favoured  spots,  where,  for  one  cause  or 
another,  the  tribute  levied  upon  the  agriculturist  was 
not  so  heavy  as  to  stop  all  possibility  of  progress. 

One  such  example  may  be  seen  in  the  district  of  Saf- 
felare  in  East  Flanders.  On  a  territory  of  37,000  acres, 
all  taken,  a  population  of  30,000  inhabitants,  all  peasants, 
not  only  finds  its  food,  but  manages,  moreover,  to  keep 

*  Risler,  Physiologie  et  Culture  du  Ble.  Paris,  1886.  Taking  the 
whole  of  the  wheat  crop  in  France,  we  see  that  the  following  progress 
has  been  realised.  In  1872-1881  the  average  crop  was  14*8  quintaux  per 
hectare.  In  1882-1890  it  attained  16*9  quintaux  per  hectare.  Increase 
by  14  per  cent,  in  ten  years  (Prof.  C.  V.  Garola,  Les  CerealeSy  p.  70  sea.). 


88  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOP& 

no  less  than  10,720  horned  cattle,  3800  sheep,  181 5 
horses  and  6550  swine,  to  grow  flax,  and  to  export 
various  agricultural  produce.* 

Another  illustration  of  this  sort  may  be  taken  from 
the  Channel  Islands,  whose  inhabitants  have  happily 
not  known  the  blessings  of  Roman  law  and  landlord- 
ism, as  they  still  live  under  the  common  law  of  Nor- 
mandy. The  small  island  of  Jersey,  eight  miles  long 
and  less  than  six  miles  wide,  still  remains  a  land  of  open- 
field  culture ;  but,  although  it  comprises  only  28,707 
acres,  rocks  included,  it  nourishes  a  population  of  about 
two  inhabitants  to  each  acre,  or  1300  inhabitants  to  the 
square  mile,  and  there  is  not  one  writer  on  agriculture 
who,  after  having  paid  a  visit  to  this  island,  does  not 
praise  the  well-being  of  the  Jersey  peasants  and  the 
admirable  results  which  they  obtain  in  their  small  farms 
of  from  five  to  twenty  acres, — very  often  less  than  five 
acres — ^by  means  of  a  rational  and  intensive  culture. 

Most  of  my  readers  will  probably  be  astonished  to 
learn  that  the  soil  of  Jersey,  which  consists  of  decom- 
posed granite,  with  no  organic  matter  in  it,  is  not  at  all 
of  astonishing  fertility,  and  that  its  climate,  though 
more  sunny  than  the  climate  of  these  isles,  offers  many 
drawbacks  on  account  of  the  small  amount  of  sun-heat 
during  the  summer  and  of  the  cold  winds  in  spring. 
But  so  it  is  in  reality,  and  at  the  beginning  of  this 
century  the  inhabitants  of  Jersey  lived  chiefly  on  im- 
ported food.  (See  Appendix  J.)  The  successes 
accomplished  lately  in  Jersey  are  entirely  due  to  the 
amount  of  labour  which  a  dense  population  is  putting 
in  the  land ;  to  a  system  of  land-tenure,  land -transfer- 
ence and  inheritance  very  different  from  those  which 
prevail  elsewhere  ;  to  freedom  from  State  taxation  ;  and 
to  the  fact  that  communal  institutions  have  been  main- 
tained down  to  quite  a  recent  period,  while  a  number 

♦  O.  de  Kerchove  de  Dtntcighen,  La />etite  CuUvrf  4e$  Flandres  beiges 
Gand,  1878. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF   AGRICULTURE.  89 

of  communal  habits  and  customs  of  mutual  support, 
derived  therefrom,  are  alive  to  the  present  time.  As  to 
the  fertility  of  the  soil,  it  is  made  partly  by  the  sea-weeds 
gathered  free  on  the  sea-coast,  but  chiefly  at  Blaydon- 
on-Tyne,  out  ot  all  sorts  of  refuse — inclusive  of  bones 
shipped  from  Plevna  and  mummies  of  cats  shipped  from 
Egypt 

It  is  well  known  that  for  the  last  thirty  years  the 
Jersey  peasants  and  farmers  have  been  growing  early 
potatoes  on  a  great  scale,  and  that  in  this  line  they 
have  attained  most  satisfactory  results.  Their  chief  aim 
being  to  have  the  potatoes  out  as  early  as  possible, 
when  they  fetch  at  the  Jersey  Weigh-Bridge  as  much 
2iS  £17  and  ;^20  the  ton,  the  digging  out  of  potatoes 
begins,  in  the  best  sheltered  places,  as  early  as  the 
first  days  of  May,  or  even  at  the  end  of  April.  Quite 
a  system  of  potato-culture,  beginning  with  the  selection 
of  tubers,  the  arrangements  for  making  them  germinate, 
the  selection  of  properly  sheltered  and  well  situated 
plots  of  ground,  the  choice  of  proper  manure,  and  end- 
ing with  the  box  in  which  the  potatoes  germinate  and 
which  has  so  many  other  useful  applications, — quite  a 
system  of  culture  has  been  worked  out  in  the  island 
for  that  purpose  by  the  collective  intelligence  of  the 
peasants.* 

In  the  last  weeks  of  May  and  in  June,  when  the 
export  is  at  its  height,  quite  a  fleet  of  steamers  runs 
between  this  small  island  and  various  ports  of  Eng- 
land and  Scotland.     Every  day  eight  to  ten  steamers 


*  One  could  not  insist  too  much  on  the  collective  character  of  the 
development  of  that  branch  of  husbandry.  In  many  places  of  the  south 
coast  early  potatoes  can  also  be  grown — to  say  nothing  of  Cornwall  and 
South  Devon,  where  potatoes  are  obtained  by  separate  labourers  in  small 
quantities  as  early  as  they  are  obtained  in  Jersey.  But  so  long  as  this 
culture  remains  the  work  of  isolated  growers,  its  results  must  necessarily 
be  inferior  to  what  the  Jersey  peasants  obtain  through  their  collective 
experience.  For  the  technical  details  concerning  potato-culture  in  Jersey, 
see  a  paper  by  a  Jersey  grower,  in  the  Journal  of  Horticulture,  22nd  and 
29th  May,  1890. 


90  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

enter  the  harbour  of  St  H^her,  and  in  twenty-four 
hours  they  are  loaded  with  potatoes  and  steer  for 
London,  Southampton,  Liverpool,  Newcastle,  and  Scot- 
land From  50,000  to  60,000  tons  of  potatoes,  valued 
at  from  ;^26o,ooo  to  ;^500,ooo,  according  to  the  year, 
are  thus  exported  every  summer;  and,  if  the  local  con- 
sumption be  taken  into  account,  we  have  at  least 
60,000  to  70,000  tons  that  are  obtained,  although  no 
more  than  from  6500  to  7  5  00  acres  are  given  to  all 
potato  crops,  early  and  late — early  potatoes,  as  is  well 
known,  never  giving  as  heavy  crops  as  the  later  ones, 
Ten  to  eleven  tons  per  acre  is  thus  the  average,  while 
in  this  country  the  average  is  only  six  tons  per  acre. 

As  soon  as  the  potatoes  are  out  the  second  crop  of 
mangold  or  of  "  three  months*  wheat "  (a  special  variety 
of  rapidly  growing  wheat)  is  sown.  Not  one  day  is 
lost  in  putting  it  in.  The  potato-field  may  consist  of 
one  or  two  acres  only,  but  as  soon  as  one-fourth  part 
of  it  is  cleared  of  the  potatoes  it  is  sown  with  the  second 
crop.  One  may  thus  see  a  small  field  divided  into  four 
plots,  three  of  which  are  sown  with  wheat  at  five  or 
six  days'  distance  from  each  other,  while  on  the  fourth 
plot  the  potatoes  are  being  dug  out 

The  admirable  condition  of  the  meadows  ,and  the 
grazing  land  in  the  Channel  Islands  has  often  been 
described,  and  although  the  aggregate  area  which  is 
given  in  Jersey  to  green  crops,  grasses  under  rotation, 
and  permanent  pasture — ^both  for  hay  and  grazing — is 
less  than  11,000  acres,  they  keep  in  Jersey  over  12,300 
head  of  cattle  and  over  2300  horses  solely  used  for 
agriculture  and  breeding. 

Moreover,  about  100  bulls  and  1600  cows  and  heifers 
are  exported  every  year,*  so  that  by  this  time,  as  was 
remarked  in  an  American  paper,  there  are  more  Jersey 
cows  in  America  than  in  Jersey  Island.     Jersey  milk 

*  See  Appendix  J. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF  AGRICULTURK  9 1 

and  butter  have  a  wide  renown,  as  also  the  pears  which 
are  grown  in  the  open  air,  but  each  of  which  is  protected 
on  the  tree  by  a  separate  cap,  and  still  more  the  fruit 
and  vegetables  which  are  grown  in  the  hothouses.  In 
a  word,  it  will  suffice  to  say  that  on  the  whole  they  ob- 
tain agricultural  produce  to  the  value  of  £^0  to  each 
acre  of  the  aggregate  surface  of  the  island. 

Fifty  pounds'  worth  of  agricultural  produce  from 
each  acre  of  the  land  is  sufficiently  good.  But  the  more 
we  study  the  modem  achievements  of  agriculture  the 
more  we  see  that  the  limits  of  productivity  of  the  soil 
are  not  attained,  even  in  Jersey.  New  horizons  are 
continually, unveiled  For  the  last  fifty  years  science — 
especially  chemistry — and  mechanical  skill  have  been 
widening  and  extending  the  industrial  powers  of  man 
upon  organic  and  inorganic  dead  matter.  Prodigies 
have  been  achieved  in  that  direction.  Now  comes  the 
turn  of  similar  achievements  with  living  plants.  Hu- 
man skill  in  the  treatment  of  living  matter,  and  science 
— in  its  branch  dealing  with  living  organisms — step  in 
with  the  intention  of  doing  for  the  art  of  food-growing 
what  mechanical  and  chemical  skill  have  done  in  the 
art  of  fashioning  and  shaping  metals,  wood  and  dead 
fibres  of  plants.  Almost  every  new  year  brings  some 
new,  often  unexpected  improvement  in  the  art  of  agri- 
culture, which  for  so  many  centuries  had  been  dormant. 

We  just  saw  that  while  the  average  potato  crop  in 
the  country  is  six  tons  per  acre,  in  Jersey  it  is  nearly 
twice  as  big.  But  Mr.  Knight,  whose  name  is  well 
known  to  every  horticulturist  in  this  country,  has  once 
dug  out  of  his  fields  no  less  than  1284  bushels  of  po- 
tatoes, or  thirty-four  tons  and  nine  cwts.  in  weight,  on 
one  single  acre ;  and  at  a  recent  competition  in  Minne- 
sota 1 1 20  bushels,  or  thirty  tons,  could  be  ascertained 
as  having  been  grown  on  one  acre. 

These  are  undoubtedly  extraordinary  crops,  but  quite 


92  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 


recently  the  French  Professor  Aimd  Girard  undertook 
a  series  of  experiments  in  order  to  find  out  the  best 
conditions  for  growing  potatoes  in  his  country.*  He  did 
not  care  for  show-crops  obtained  by  means  of  extrava- 
gant manuring,  but  carefully  studied  all  conditions :  the 
best  variety,  the  depth  of  tilling  and  planting,  the  dis- 
tance between  the  plants.  Then  he  entered  into 
correspondence  with  some  350  growers  in  different  parts 
of  France,  advised  them  by  letters,  and  finally  induced 
them  to  experiment  Strictly  following  his  instructions, 
several  of  his  correspondents  made  experiments  on  a 
small  scale,  and  they  obtained — instead  of  the  three  tons 
which  they  were  accustomed  to  grow — such  crops  as 
would  correspond  to  twenty  and  thirty-six  tons  to  the 
acre.t  Moreover,  ninety  growers  experimented  on 
fields  more  than  one-quarter  of  an  acre  in  size,  and  more 
than  twenty  growers  made  their  experiments  on  larger 
areas  of  from  three  to  twenty-eight  acres.  The  result 
was  that  none  of  them  obtained  less  than  twelve  tons  to 
the  acre,  while  some  obtained  twenty  tons,  and  the 
average  was,  for  the  no  growers,  fourteen  and  a  half 
tons  per  acre. 

However,  industry  requires  still  heavier  crops. 
Potatoes  are  largely  used  in  Germany  and  Belgium 
for  distilleries;  consequently,  the  distillery  owners  try 
to  obtain  the  greatest  possible  amounts  of  starch  from  the 
acre.  Extensive  experiments  have  lately  been  made 
for  that  purpose  in  Germany,  and  the  crops  were :  nine 
tons  per  acre  for  the  poor  sorts,  fourteen  tons  for  the 
better  ones,  and  thirty-two  and  four-tenths  tons  for  the 
best  varieties  of  potatoes. 

Three  tons  to  the  acre  and  more  than  thirty  tons  to 
the  acre  are  thus  the  ascertained  limits ;  and  one  neces- 
sarily asks  oneself:    Which   of  the   two   requires   less 

*  See  the  Annales  agronomiques  for  1892  and  1893  ;  also  youmo^l  des 
Economistes,  ftvrier,  1893,  p.  215. 
t  Fifty  to  ninety  tons  per  hectare. 


■ 


THE   POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE.  93 

labour  in  tilling,  planting,  cultivating  and  digging,  and 
less  expenditure  in  manure — thirty  tons  grown  on  ten 
acres,  or  the  same  thirty  tons  grown  on  one  acre  or 
two  ?  If  labour  is  of  no  consideration,  while  every  penny 
spent  in  seeds  and  manure  is  of  great  importance,  as  is 
unhappily  very  often  the  case  with  the  peasant — he  will 
perforce  choose  the  first  method  But  is  it  the  most 
•economic  ? 

Again,  I  just  mentioned  that  in  the  Saffelare  dis- 
trict and  Jersey  they  succeed  in  keeping  one  head  of 
horned  cattle  to  each  acre  of  green  crops,  meadows 
and  pasture  land,  while  elsewhere  two  or  three  acres 
are  required  for  the  same  purpose.  But  better  results 
still  can  be  obtained  by  means  of  irrigation,  either  with 
sewage  or  even  with  pure  water.  In  England,  farmers 
are  contented  with  one  and  a  half  and  two  tons  of  hay 
per  acre,  and  in  the  part  of  Flanders  just  mentioned, 
two  and  a  half  tons  of  hay  to  the  acre  are  considered  a 
fair  crop.  But  on  the  irrigated  fields  of  the  Vosges,  the 
Vaucluse,  etc.,  in  France,  six  tons  of  dry  hay  become  the 
rule,  even  upon  ungrateful  soil ;  and  this  means  consider- 
ably more  than  the  annual  food  of  one  milch  cow  (which 
can  be  taken  at  a  little  less  than  five  tons)  grown  on  each 
acre.  All  taken,  the  results  of  irrigation  have  proved 
so  satisfactory  in  France  that  during  the  years  1862-82 
no  less  than  1,355,000  acres  of  meadows  have  been 
irrigated,*  which  means  that  the  annual  meat-food  of  at 
least  1,500,000  full-grown  persons,  or  mpre,  has  been 
added  to  the  yearly  income  of  the  country ;  home-grown, 
not  imported.  In  fact,  in  the  valley  of  the  Seine,  the 
value  of  the  land  was  doubled  by  irrigation ;  in  the 
Sadne  valley  it  was  increased  five  times,  and  ten  times 
in  certain  landes  of  Britanny.t 

*  Barral  in  Journal  d' Agriculture  pratique^  2  ftvrier,  1889 ;  Boitel, 
Herbages  et  Prairies  naturelles,  Paris,  1887. 

t  The  increase  of  the  crops  due  to  irrigation  is  most  instructive.  In 
the  most  unproductive  Sologne,  irrigation   has  increased   the  hay  cro/ 


94  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND    WORKSHOPS. 

The  example  of  the  Campine  district,  in  Belgium, 
is  classical.  It  was  a  most  unproductive  territory — mere 
sand  from  the  sea,  blown  into  irregular  mounds  which 
were  only  kept  together  by  the  roots  of  the  heath ; 
the  acre  of  it  used  to  be  sold,  not  rented,  at  from  5s.  to 
7s.  (15  to  20  francs  per  hectare).  But  now  it  is  capable, 
thanks  to  the  work  of  the  Flemish  peasants  and  to 
irrigation,  to  produce  the  food  of  one  milch  cow  per 
acre — the  dung  of  the  cattle  being  utilised  for  further 
improvements. 

The  irrigated  meadows  round  Milan  are  another  well- 
known  example.  Nearly  22,000  acres  are  irrigated  there 
with  water  derived  from  the  sewers  of  the  city,  and  they 
yield  crops  of  from  eight  to  ten  tons  of  hay  as  a  rule ; 
occasionally  some  separate  meadows  will  yield  the  fabu- 
lous amount — fabulous  to-day,  but  no  longer  fabulous 
to-morrow — of  eighteen  tons  of  hay  per  acre,  that  is, 
the  food  of  nearly  four  cows  to  the  acre,  and  nine  times 
the  yield  of  good  meadows  in  this  country.*  However, 
English  readers  need  not  go  so  far  as  Milan  for  ascer- 
taining the  results  of  irrigation  by  sewer  water.  They 
have  several  such  examples  in  this  country,  in  the 
experiments  of  Sir  John  Lawes,  and  especially  at  Craig- 
entinny,  near  Edinburgh,  where,  to  use  Ronna's  words, 
"  the  growth  of  rye  grass  is  so  activated  that  it  attains 
its  full  development  in  one  year  instead  of  in  three  to 
four  years.  Sown  in  August,  it  gives  a  first  crop  in 
autumn,  and  then,  beginning  with  next  spring,  a  crop 
of  four  tons  to  the  acre  is  taken  every  month ;   which 

from  two  tons  per  hectare  (two  and  a  half  acres)  to  eight  tons ;  in  the 
Vendue,  from  four  tons  of  bad  hay  to  ten  tons  of  excellent  hay.  In  the 
Ain,  M.  Puris,  having  spent  19,000  francs  for  irrigating  ninety-two  and 
a  half  hectares  (about  £-2,  los.  per  acre),  obtained  an  increase  of  207  tons 
of  excellent  hay.  In  the  south  of  France,  a  net  increase  of  over  four 
bushels  of  wheat  per  acre  is  easily  obtained  by  irrigation ;  while  for 
market-gardening  the  increase  was  found  to  attain  ;i^30  to  £^0  per  acre. 
(See  H.  Sagnier,  "Irrigation,"  in  Barral's  Diciionnaire  d' Agriculture, 
vol.  iii.,  p.  339.) 

*  Dictionnaire  d' Agriculture,  same  article.     See  also  Appendix  I. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF   AGRICULTURE.  95 

represents  in  the  fourteen  months  more  than  fifty-six 
tons  (of  green  fodder)  to  the  acre."  *  At  Lodge  Farm 
they  grow  forty  to  fifty-two  tons  of  green  crops  per  acre, 
after  the  cereals,  without  new  manuring.  At  Aldershot 
they  obtain  excellent  potato  crops;  and  at  Romford 
(Breton's  Farm)  Colonel  Hope  obtained,  in  187 1-2,  quite 
extravagant  crops  of  various  roots  and  potatoes.! 

It  can  thus  be  said  that  while  at  the  present  time 
we  give  two  and  three  acres  for  keeping  one  head  of 
horned  cattle,  and  only  in  a  few  places  one  head  of  cattle 
is  kept  on  each  acre  given  to  green  crops,  meadows  and 
pasture,  man  has  already  in  irrigation  (which  very  soon 
repays  when  it  is  properly  made)  the  possibility  of  keep- 
ing twice  and  even  thrice  as  many  head  of  cattle  to  the 
acre  over  parts  of  his  territory.  Moreover,  the  very 
heavy  crops  of  roots  which  are  now  obtained  (seventy- 
five  of  no  tons  of  beetroot  to  the  acre  are  not  infre- 
quent) give  another  powerful  means  for  increasing  the 
number  of  cattle  without  taking  the  land  from  what  is 
now  given  to  the  culture  of  cereals. 

Another  new  departure  in  agriculture,  which  is  full  of 
promises  and  probably  will  upset  many  a  current  notion, 
must  be  mentioned  in  this  place.  I  mean  the  almost 
horticultural  treatment  of  our  com  crops,  which  is  widely 
practised  in  the  far  East,  and  begins  to  claim  our  atten- 
tion in  Western  Europe  as  well. 

At  the  First  International  Exhibition,  in  1851,  Major 
Hallett,  of  Manor  House,  Brighton,  had  a  series  of  very 
interesting  exhibits  which  he  described  as  "pedigree 
cereals".  By  picking  out  the  best  plants  of  his  fields, 
and  by  submitting  their  descendants  to  a  careful  selec- 

*  Ronna,  Les  Irrigations^  vol.  iii.,  p.  67.     Paris,  1890. 

t  Prof.  Ronna  gives  the  following  figures  of  crops  per  acre :  twenty- 
eight  tons  of  potatoes,  sixteen  tons  of  marigolds,  105  tons  of  beet,  no 
tons  of  carrots,  nine  to  twenty  tons  of  various  cabbage,  and  so  on.  Most 
remarkable  results  seem  also  to  have  been  obtained  by  M.  Goppart,  by 
growing  green  fodder  for  ensilage.  See  his  work,  Manuel  de  la  Culluri 
des  Mats  et  autres  Fourrages  verts,  Paris,  1877. 


96  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

tion  from  year  to  year,,  he  had  succeeded  in  producing 
new  prolific  varieties  of  wheat  and  barley.  Each  grain 
of  these  cereals,  instead  of  giving  only  two  to  four  ears, 
as  is  the  usual  average  in  a  corn-field,  gave  ten  to  twenty- 
five  ears,  and  the  best  ears,  instead  of  carrying  from  sixty 
to  sixty-eight  grains,  had  an  average  of  nearly  twice 
that  number  of  grains. 

In  order  to  obtain  such  prolific  varieties  Major  Hallett 
naturally  could  not  sow  his  picked  grains  broadcast ;  he 
planted  them,  each  separately,  in  rows,  at  distances  of 
from  ten  to  twelve  inches  from  each  other.  In  this  way 
he  found  that  each  grain,  having  full  room  for  what  is 
called  "  tillering  "  {tallage  in  French  *),  would  produce 
ten,  fifteen,  twenty-five,  and  even  up  to  ninety  and  lOO 
ears,  as  the  case  may  be ;  and  as  each  ear  would  contain 
from  60  to  120  grains,  crops  of  500  to  2500  grains,  or 
more,  could  be  obtained  from  each  separately  planted 
grain.  He  even  exhibited  at  the  Exeter  meeting  of  the 
British  Association  three  plants  of  wheat,  barley  and 
oats,  each  from  a  single  grain,  which  had  the  following 
number  of  stems ;  wheat,  ninety-four  stems ;  barley, 
no  stems;  oats,  eighty-seven  stems.t  The  barley 
plant  which  had  no  stems  thus  gave  something  like 
5000  to  6000  grains  from  one  single  grain.  A  careful 
drawing  of  that  wonderful  stubble  was  made  by  Major 
Hallett's  daughter  and  circulated  with  his  pamphlets.} 

*  •*  Shortly  after  the  plant  appears  above  ground  it  commences  to 
throw  out  new  and  distinct  stems,  upon  the  first  appearance  of  which 
a  correspondent  root-bud  is  developed  for  its  support ;  and  while  the  new 
stems  grow  out  flat  over  the  surface  of  the  soil,  their  respective  roots 
assume  a  corresponding  development  beneath  it.  This  process,  called 
•  tillering,'  will  continue  until  the  season  arrives  for  the  stems  to  assume 
an  upright  growth."  The  less  the  roots  have  been  interfered  with  by  over- 
crowding the  better  will  be  the  ears  (Major  Hallett,  "  Thin  Seeding,"  etc.). 

f  Paper  on  "  Thin  Seeding  and  the  Selection  of  Seed,"  read  before  the 
Midland  Farmers'  Club,  4th  June,  1874. 

+  "  Pedigree  Cereals,"  1889.  Paper  on  "Thin  Seeding,"  etc.,  just 
mentioned.  Abstracts  from  The  Times,  etc.,  1862.  Major  Hallett  con- 
tributed, moreover,  several  papers  to  the  yournal  of  the  Royal  Agricul- 
tural Society,  and  one  to  The  Nineteenth  Century.  By  the  courtesy  ol 
the  Co-operative  Wholesale  Society,  I  am  enabled  to  reproduce  that, 
drawing  from  a  paper  I  contributed  to  the  Society's  Annual  for  1897. 


THE  POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE. 


97 


Again,  in  1876,  a  wheat  plant,  with  "  105  heads  growing 
on  one  root,  on  which  more  than  8000  grains  were  grow- 
ing at  once,"  was  exhibited  at  the  Maidstone  Fcirmers' 
Club.* 


Fio.  4. — iPlant  of  barley,  with  no  stems,  obtained  by  Major 
Hallett  from  one  single  planted  grain. 

Two  different  processes  were  thus  involved  in  Hallett's 
experiments :  a  process  of  selection,  in  order  to  create 
new  varieties  of  cereals,  similar  to  the  breeding  of  new 

*  Agricultural  Gazette,  3rd  January,  1876.  Ninety  ears,  some  of 
which  contained  as  many  as  132  grains  each,  were  also  obtained  in  New 
Zealand. 

7 


98  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

varieties  of  cattle ;  and  a  method  of  immensely  increas- 
ing the  crop  from  each  grain  and  from  a  given  area,  by 
planting  each  seed  separately  and  wide  apart,  so  as  to 
have  room  for  the  full  development  of  the  young  plant, 
which  is  usually  suffocated  by  its  neighbours  in  our 
corn-fields* 

The  double  character  of  Major  Hallett's  method — 
the  breeding  of  new  prolific  varieties,  and  the  method 
of  culture  by  planting  the  seeds  wide  apart — seems, 
however,  so  far  as  I  am  entitled  to  judge,  to  have 
been  overlooked  until  quite  lately.  The  method  was 
mostly  judged  upon  its  results ;  and  when  a  farmer  had 
experimented  upon  "  Hallett's  Wheat,"  and  found  out 
that  it  was  late  in  ripening  in  his  own  locality,  or  gave 
a  less  perfect  grain  than  some  other  variety,  he  usually 
did  not  care  more  about  the  method t  However,  Major 
Hallett's  successes  or  non-successes  in  breeding  such 
or  such  varieties  are  quite  distinct  from  what  is  to  be 
said  about  the  method  itself  of  selection,  or  the  method 
of  planting  wheat  seeds  wide  apart  Varieties  which 
were  bred  on  the  windy  downs  of  Brighton  may  be,  or 
may  not  be,  suitable  to  this  or  that  locality.  Latest 
physiological  researches  give  such  an  importance  to 
evaporation  in  the  bringing  of  cereals  to  maturity  that 
where  evaporation  is  not  so  rapid  as  it  is  on  the  Brigh- 
ton Downs,  other  varieties  must  be  resorted  to  and  bred 
on  purpose.+     I  should  also  suggest  that  quite  different 

*  It  appears  from  many  different  experiments  (mentioned  in  Prof. 
Garola's  excellent  work,  Le$  Cereales,  Paris,  1892)  that  when  tested  seeds 
(of  which  no  more  than  6  per  cent,  are  lost  on  sowing)  are  sown  broad- 
cast, to  the  amount  of  500  seeds  per  square  metre  (a  little  more  than  one 
square  yard),  only  148  of  them  give  plants.  Each  plant  gives  in  such 
case  from  two  to  four  stems  and  from  two  to  four  ears ;  but  nearly  360 
seeds  are  entirely  lost.  When  sown  in  rows,  the  loss  is  not  so  great,  but 
it  is  still  considerable. 

t  See  Prof.  Garola's  remarks  on  "  Hallett's  Wheat,"  which,  by  the 
way,  seem  to  be  well  known  to  farmers  in  France  and  Germany  {Les 
Cereales,  p.  337). 

X  Besides,  Hallett's  wheat  must  not  be  sown  later  than  the  first  week 
of  September.  Those  who  may  try  experiments  with  planted  wheat 
must  be  especially  careful  to  make  the  experiments  in  open  fields,  not  in 
a  back  garden,  and  to  sow  early. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF  AGRICULTURE.  99 

wheats  than  the  English  ought  to  be  experimented  upon 
for  obtaining  prohfic  varieties;  namely,  the  quickly- 
growing  Norwegian  wheat,  the  Jersey  "  three  months' 
wheat,"  or  even  Yakutsk  barley,  which  matures  with  an 
astonishing  rapidity.  And  now  that  horticulturists,  so 
experienced  in  "  breeding  "  and  "  crossing  "  as  Vilmorin, 
Carter,  Sherif,  W.  Saunders  in  Canada  and  many  others 
are,  have  taken  the  matter  in  hand,  we  may  feel  sure 
that  future  progress  will  be  made.  But  breeding  is  one 
thing ;  and  the  planting  wide  apart  of  seeds  of  an  appro- 
priate variety  of  wheat  is  quite  another  thing. 

This  last  method  was  lately  experimented  upon  by 
M.  Grandeau,  Director  of  the  Station  Agronomique  de 
TEst,  and  by  M.  Florimond  Desspr^z  at  the  experi- 
mental station  of  Capelle ;  and  in  both  cases  the  results 
were  most  remarkable.  At  this  last  station  a  method 
which  is  in  use  in  France  for  the  choice  of  seeds  was 
applied.  Already  now  some  French  farmers  go  over 
their  wheat-fields  before  the  crop  begins,  choose  the 
soundest  plants  which  bear  two  or  three  equally  strong 
stems,  adorned  with  long  ears,  well  stocked  with  grains, 
and  take  these  ears.  Then  they  crop  off  with  scissors 
the  top  and  the  bottom  of  each  ear  and  keep  its  middle 
part  only,  which  contains  the  biggest  seeds.  With  a 
dozen  quarts  of  such  selected  grains  they  obtain  next 
year  the  required  quantity  of  seeds  of  a  superior  quality.* 

The  same  was  done  by  M.  Desspr^z.  Then  each 
seed  was  planted  separately,  eight  inches  apart  in  a 
row,  by  means  of  a  specially  devised  tool,  similar  to 
the  rayonneur  which  is  used  for  planting  potatoes ;  and 
the  rows,  also  eight  inches  apart,  were  alternately  given 
to  the  big  and  to  the  smaller  seeds.  One-fourth  part  of 
an  acre  havmg  been  planted  in  this  way,  with  seeds  ob- 
tained from  both  early  and  late  ears,  crops  corresponding 
to  83.8  bushels  per  acre  for  the  first  series,  and  90.4 

♦  Upon  this  method  of  selecting  seeds  opinions  are,  however,  at 
variance  amongst  agriculturists. 


[OO 


FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 


bushels  for  the  second  series,  were  obtained ;  even  the 
small  grains  gave  in  this  experiment  as  much  as  70.2 
and  62  bushels  respectively.* 

The  crop  was  thus  more  than  doubled  by  the  choice 
of  seeds  and  by  planting  them  separately  eight  inches 
apart.  It  corresponded  in  Desspr^z's  experiments  to 
600  grains  obtained  on  the  average  from  each  grain  sown; 
and  one-tenth  or  one-eleventh  part  of  an  acre  was  suffi- 
cient in  such  case  to  grow  the  eight  and  a  half  bushels 


Fig.  5. — Wheat  Plants,  a,  Has  given  17  ears  from  each  planted 
grain.  Soil  manured  with  chemical  manure  only.  6,  Has  given 
25  ears  from  each  planted  grain.  Soil  manured  with  both  stable 
and  chemical  manure. 

of  wheat  which  are  required  on  the  average  for  the 
annual  bread  food  per  head  of  a  population  which 
would  chiefly  live  on  bread. 

Prof.    Grandeau,    Director    of    the    French    Station 
Agronomique  de  TEst,  has  also  made,  since  1886,  ex- 


*  The  straw  was  eighty-three  and  seventy-seven  cwts.  per  acre  in  the 
first  case ;  fifty-nine  and  forty-nine  cwts.  in  the  second  case  (Garola,  Les 
Cereales).  In  his  above-mentioned  paper  on  "Thin  Seeding,"  Major 
Hallett  mentions  a  crop  at  the  rate  of  108  bushels  to  the  acre,  obtained 
by  planting  nine  inches  apart. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE. 


lOI 


periments  on  Major  Hallett's  method,  and  he  obtained 
similar  results.  "  In  a  proper  soil,"  he  wrote,  "  one 
single  grain  of  wheat  can  give  as  much  as  fifty  stems 
(and  ears),  and  even  more,  and  thus  cover  a  circle  thir- 
teen inches  in  diameter."  *  But  as  he  seems  to  know 
how  difficult  it  often  is  to  convince  people  of  the  plainest 
facts,  he  published  the  photographs  of  separate  wheat 
plants  grown  in  different  soils,  differently  manured, 
including  pure   river  sand  enriched  by  manure.t     He 


J 


Fig.  6. — Squares  at  Professor  Grandeau's  experimental  station,  planted 
with  grains  of  wheat,  in  three  different  soils ;  a,  pure  sand  ;  b  and 
c,  manured  arable  soil ;  each  grain  12  inches  apart. 

concluded  that  under  proper  treatment  2000  ana  even 
4000  grains  could  be  easily  obtained  from  each  planted 
grain.  The  seedlings,  growing  from  grains  planted  ten 
inches  apart,  cover  the  whole  space,  and  the  experiment 

*  L.  Grandeau,  Etudes  agronomiques,  36  s^rie,  1887-8,  p.  43.  This 
series  is  still  continued  by  one  volume  every  year. 

t  On  one  of  these  photographs  one  sees  that  in  a  soil  improved  by 
chemical  rnanure  only,  seventeen  stems  from  each  grain  are  obtained; 
with  organic  manure  added  to  the  former,  twenty-five  stems  were  obtained. 
Reproduced  by  the  courtesy  of  the  Co-operative  Wholesale  Society. 


102  FIELDS,  FACTORIES   AND  WORKSHOPS. 

plot  takes  the  aspect  of  an  excellent  corn-field,  as  may  be 
seen  from  a  photograph  given  by  Grandeau  in  his 
Etudes  agronomiques. 

In  fact,  the  eight  and  a  half  bushels  required  for 
one  man's  annual  food  were  actually  grown  at  the 
Tomblaine  station  on  a  surface  of  2250  square  feet,  or 
forty-seven  feet  square,  i.e.,  on  very  nearly  one-twentieth 
part  of  an  acre. 

Again,  we  may  thus  say,  that  where  we  require  now 
three  acres,  one  acre  would  be  sufficient  for  growing 
the  same  amount  of  food,  if  planting  wide  apart  were 
resorted  to.  And  there  is,  surely,  no  more  objection 
to  planting  wheat  than  there  is  to  sowing  in  rows,  which 
is  now  in  general  use,  although  at  the  time  when  the 
system  was  first  introduced,  in  lieu  of  the  formerly  usual 
mode  of  sowing  broadcast,  it  certainly  was  met  with 
great  distrust.  While  the  Chinese  and  the  Japanese 
used  for  centuries  to  sow  wheat  in  rows,  by  means  of  a 
bamboo  tube  adapted  to  the  plough,  European  writers 
objected,  of  course,  to  this  method  under  the  pretext 
that  it  would  require  too  much  labour.  It  is  the  same 
now  with  planting  each  seed  apart  Professional  writers 
sneer  at  it,  although  all  the  rice  that  is  grown  in  Japan 
is  planted  and  even  replanted.  Every  one,  however, 
who  will  think  of  the  labour  which  must  be  spent  for 
ploughing,  harrowing,  fencing,  and  keeping  free  of  weeds 
three  acres  instead  of  one  and  who  will  calculate  the 
corresponding  expenditure  in  manure,  will  surely  admit 
that  all  advantages  are  in  favour  of  the  one  acre  as 
against  the  three  acres,  to  say  nothing  of  the  possibilities 
of  irrigation,  or  of  the  planting  machine-tool,  which  will 
be  devised  as  soon  as  there  is  a  demand  for  it* 

More  than  that,  there  is  full  reason  to  believe  that 
even  this  method  is  liable  to  further  improvement  by 
means  of  replanting.     Cereals  in  such  cases  would  be 

•  See  Appendix  K. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE.  I03 

treated  as  vegetables  are  treated  in  horticulture.  Such 
is,  at  least,  the  idea  which  began  to  germinate  since  the 
methods  of  cereal  culture  that  are  resorted  to  in  China 
and  Japan  became  better  known  in  Europe.  (See  Ap- 
pendix L.) 

The  future — a  near  future,  I  hope — will  show  what 
practical  importance  such  a  method  of  treating  cereals 
may  have.  But  we  need  not  speculate  about  that  future. 
We  have  already,  in  the  facts  mentioned  in  this  chapter, 
an  experimental  basis  for  quite  a  number  of  means  of 
improving  our  present  methods  of  culture  and  of  largely 
increasing  the  crops.  It  is  evident  tha,t  in  a  book  which 
is  not  intended  to  be  a  manual  of  agriculture,  all  I  can 
do  is  to  give  only  a  few  hints  to  set  people  thinking 
for  themselves  upon  this  subject.  But  the  little  that  has 
been  said  is  sufficient  to  show  that  we  have  no  right 
to  complain  of  over-population,  and  no  need  to  fear  it 
in  the  future.  Our  means  of  obtaining  from  the  soil 
whatever  we  want,  under  any  climate  and  upon  any 
soil,  have  lately  been  improved  at  such  a  rate  that  we 
cannot  foresee  yet  what  is  the  limit  of  productivity  of 
a  few  acres  of  land.  The  hmit  vanishes  in  proportion 
to  our  better  study  of  the  subject,  and  every  year  makes 
it  vanish  farther  and  farther  from  our  sight 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRlCUhTVRE— {continued). 

Extension  of  market  gardening  and  fruit  growing:  in  France;  in  the 
United  States — Culture  under  glass — Kitchen  gardens  under  glass — 
Hothouse  culture:  in  Guernsey;  in  Belgium — Conclusion. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  features  of  the  present 
evolution  of  agriculture  ^s  the  extension  lately  taken 
by  intensive  market  gardening  of  the  same  sort  as  has 
been  described  in  the  third  chapter.  What  formerly 
was  limited  to  a  few  hundreds  of  small  gardens,  is 
now  spreading  with  an  astonishing  rapidity.  In  this 
country  the  area  given  to  market  gardens  has  more 
than  doubled  within  the  last  sixteen  years,  ana  attained, 
in  1894,  88,210  acres,  as  against  40,582  acres  in  1879* 
But  it  is  especially  in  France,  Belgium  and  America  that 
this  branch  of  culture  has  lately  taken  a  great  develop- 
ment    (See  Appendix  M.) 

At  the  present  time  no  less  than  1,075,000  acres  are 
given  in  France  to  market-gardening  and  intensive 
fruit  culture,  and  a  few  years  ago  it  was  estimated 
that  the  average  yield  of  every  acre  given  to  these 
cultures  attains  ;^33  los.f  Their  character,  as  well 
as  the  amount  of  skill  displayed  in,  and  labour  given 
to,  these  cultures,  will  best  appear  from  the  following 
illustrations. 

*  Charles  Whitehead,  Hints  on  Vegetable  and  Fruit  Farming,  London 
(J.  Murray),  1890.     The  Oardener^s  Chronicle,  20th  April,  1895. 

f  Charles  Baltet,  U Horticulture  dans  les  cinq  Parties  du  Monde. 
Ouvrage  couronne  par  la  Societe  Nationale  d^ Horticulture.  Paris 
Olachette),  1895. 

(104) 


THE   POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE.  I05 

About  Roscoff,  which  is  a  great  centre  in  Brittany 
for  the  export  to  England  of  such  potatoes  as  will  keep 
till  late  in  summer,  and  of  all  sorts  of  vegetables,  a 
territory,  twenty-six  miles  in  diameter,  is  entirely  given 
to  these  cultures,  and  the  rents  attain  and  exceed  £$ 
per  acre.  Nearly  300  steamers  call  at  Roscoff  to  ship 
potatoes,  onions  and  other  vegetables  to  London  and 
different  English  ports,  as  far  north  as  Newcastle. 
Moreover,  as  much  as  4000  tons  of  vegetables  are  sent 
every  year  to  Paris.*  And  although  the  Roscoff  penin- 
sula enjoys  a  specially  warm  climate,  small  stone  walls 
are  erected  everywhere,  and  rushes  are  grown  on  their 
tops  in  order  to  give  still  more  protection  and  heat  to 
the  vegetables. t  The  climate  is  improved  as  well  as 
the  soil. 

In  the  neighbourhoods  of  Cherbourg  it  is  upon  land 
conquered  from  the  sea  that  the  best  vegetables  are 
grown — more  than  800  acres  of  that  land  being  given 
to  potatoes  exported  to  London;  another  500  acres 
are  given  to  cauliflower;  125  acres  to  Brussels  sprouts; 
and  so  on.  Potatoes  grown  under  glass  are  also  sent 
to  the  London  market  from  the  middle  of  April,  and  the 
total  export  of  vegetables  from  Cherbourg  to  England 
attains  300,000  cwts.,  while  from  the  small  port  of  Bar- 
fleur  another  100,000  cwts.  are  sent  to  this  country,  and 
about  60,000  cwts.  to  Paris.  Nay,  in  a  quite  small 
commune,  Surtainville,  near  Cherbourg,  ;^28oo  are  made 
out  of  180  acres  of  market  gardens,  three  crops  being 
taken  every  year :  cabbage  in  February,  early  potatoes 
next,  and  various  crops  in  the  autumn — to  say  nothing 
of  the  catch  crops.  At  Ploustagel  one  hardly  believes 
that  he  is  in  Brittany.  Melons  used  to  be  grown  at 
that  spot,  long  since,  in  the  open  fields,  with  glass  frames 
to  protect  them  from  the  spring  frosts,  and  green  peas 
were  grown  under  the  protection  of  rows  of  furze  which 

•  Charles  Baltet,  he.  cit. 

t  Ardouin  Dumazet,  Voyage  en  France,  vol.  v.,  p.  lo. 


Io6  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

sheltered  them  from  th:  northern  winds.  Now,  whole 
fields  are  covered  with  strawberries,  roses,  violets,  cherries 
and  plums,  down  to  the  very  sea  beach*  Even  the 
landes  are  reclaimed,  and  we  are  told  that  in  five  years 
or  so  there  will  be  no  more  landes  in  that  district  (p. 
265).  Nay,  the  marshes  of  the  Del—"  The  Holland  of 
Brittany"  —  protected  from  the  sea  by  a  wall  (5050 
acres),  have  been  turned  into  market  gardens,  covered 
with  cauliflowers,  onions,  radishes,  haricot  beans  and 
so  on,  the  acre  of  that  land  being  rented  at  from  £2  los. 
to  £d^ 

About  Paris  no  less  than  50,000  acres  are  given  to 
the  field  culture  of  vegetables  and  25,000  acres  to  the 
forced  culture  of  the  same.  Already  fifty  years  ago  the 
yearly  rent  paid  by  market  gardeners  attained  as  much 
as  i^i8  and  £'2\  per  acre,  and  yet  it  has  been  increased 
since,  as  well* as  the  gross  receipts,  which  were  valued 
by  Courtois  Gerard  at  ;^240  per  acre  for  the  larger 
market  gardens,  and  twice  as  much  for  the  smaller  ones 
in  which  early  vegetables  are  grown  in  frames. 

The  fruit  culture  in  the  neighbourhoods  of  Paris  is 
equally  wonderful.  At  Montreuil,  for  instance,  750 
acres,  belonging  to  400  gardeners,  are  literally  covered 
with  stone  walls,  specially  erected  for  growing  fruit, 
and  having  an  aggregate  length  of  400  miles.  Upon 
these  walls,  peach  trees,  pear  trees  and  vines  are 
spread,  and  every  year  something  like  12,000,000 
peaches  are  gathered,  as  well  as  a  considerable  amount 
of  the  finest  pears  and  grapes.  The  acre  in  such  con- 
ditions brings  in  £^^.  This  is  how  a  "warmer  cli- 
mate "  was  made,  at  a  time  when  the  greenhouse  was 
still  a  costly  luxury.  All  taken,  1250  acres  are  given 
to  peaches  (25,000,000  peaches  every  year)  in  the 
close  neighbourhood  of  Paris.  Acres  and  acres  are 
also  covered  with  pear  trees  which  yield  three  to  five  tons 

♦  Ardouin  Dumazet,  Voyasre  en  France,  vol.  v.,  p.  200. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE.  I07 

of  fruit  per  acre,  such  crop  being  sold  at  from  ;^50  to 
;^6o.  Nay,  at  Angers,  on  the  Loire,  where  pears  are 
eight  days  in  advance  of  the  suburbs  of  Paris,  Baltet 
knows  an  orchard  of  five  acres,  covered  with  pears  (low 
trees),  which  brings  in  ;^400  every  year;  and  at  a  dis- 
tance of  thirty-three  miles  from  Paris  one  pear  planta- 
tion brings  in  £2/^  per  acre — the  costs  of  package, 
transport  and  selling  being  deducted.  Likewise,  the 
plantations  of  plums,  of  which  80,000  cwts.  are  con- 
sumed every  year  at  Paris  alone,  give  an  annual  money 
income  of  from  £2g  to  £/^^  per  acre  every  year ;  and  yet, 
pears,  plums  and  cherries  are  sold  at  Paris,  fresh  and 
juicy,  at  such  a  price  that  the  poor,  too,  can  eat  fresh 
home-grown  fruit. 

In  the  province  of  Anjou  one  may  see  how  a  heavy 
clay,  improved  with  sand  taken  from  the  Loire  and  with 
manure,  has  been  turned,  in  the  neighbourhoods  of 
Angers,  and  especially  at  Saint  Laud,  into  a  soil  which 
is  rented  at  from  £2  los.  to  £^  the  acre,  and  upon  that 
soil  fruit  is  grown  which  a  few  years  ago  was  exported 
to  America.*  At  Bennecour,  a  quite  small  village  of 
850  inhabitants,  near  Paris,  one  sees  what  man  can  make 
out  of  the  most  unproductive  soil.  Quite  recently  the 
steep  slopes  of  its  hills  were  only  mergers  from  which 
stone  was  extracted  for  the  pavements  of  Paris.  Now 
these  slopes  are  entirely  covered  with  apricot  and  cherry 
trees,  black-currant  shrubs,  and  plantations  of  asparagus, 
green  peas  and  the  like.  In  1881,  ;^56oo  worth  of 
apricots  alone  was  sold  out  of  this  village,  and  it  must 
be  borne  in  mind  that  competition  is  so  acute  in  the 
neighbourhoods  of  Paris  that  a  delay  of  twenty-four 
hours  in  the  sending  of  apricots  to  the  market  will  often 
mean  a  loss  of  8s. — one-seventh  of  the  sale  price  on 
each  hundredweight! 

*  Baudrillart,  Les  Populations  ctgricoles  de  la  France :  Anfou,  pp.  70-71. 

+  The  total  production  of  dessert  fruit  as  well  as  dried  or  preserved 

fruit  in  France  was  estimated,  in  1876,  at  84,000  tons,  and  its  value  was 


loS  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

At  Perpignan,  green  artichokes — a  favourite  vegetable 
in  France — are  grown,  from  October  till  June,  on  an  area 
covering  2500  acres,  and  the  net  revenue  is  estimated 
at  ;^32  per  acre.  In  Central  France,  artichokes  are  even 
cultivated  in  the  open  fields,  and  nevertheless  the  crops 
are  valued  (by  Baltet)  at  from  ;^48  to  ;^  100  per  acre. 
In  the  Loiret,  1500  gardeners,  who  occasionally  employ 
5000  workmen,  obtain  from  ;^400,ooo  to  ;^48o,ooo  worth 
of  vegetables,  and  their  yearly  expenditure  for  manure 
is  £^60,000.  This  figure  alone  is  the  best  answer  to 
those  who  are  fond  of  talking  about  the  extraordinary 
fertility  of  the  soil,  each  time  they  are  told  of  some 
success  in  agriculture.  At  Lyons,  a  population  of 
430,000  inhabitants  is  entirely  supplied  with  vegetables 
by  the  local  gardeners.  The  same  is  in  Amiens,  which 
is  another  big  industrial  city.  The  districts  surrounding 
Orleans  form  another  great  centre  for  market-garden- 
ing, and  it  is  especially  worthy  of  notice  that  the 
shrubberies  of  Orldans  supply  even  America  with  large 
quantities  of  young  trees.* 

It  would  take,  however,  a  volume  to  describe  the 
chief  centres  of  market-gardening  and  fruit-growing  in 
France  ;  and  I  will  mention  only  one  region  more,  where 
vegetables  and  fruit-growing  go  hand  in  hand.  It  lies 
on  the  banks  of  the  Rh6ne,  about  Vienne,  where  we 
find  a  narrow  strip  of  land,  partly  composed  of  granite 
rocks,  which  has  now  become  a  garden  of  an  incredible 
richness.  The  origin  of  that  wealth,  we  are  told  by 
Ardouin  Dumazet,  dates  from  some  thirty  years  ago, 
when  the  vineyards,  ravaged  by  phylloxera,  had  to  be 
destroyed  and  some  new  culture  had  to  be  found.  The 
village  of  Ampuis  became  then  renowned  for  its  apricots. 
At  the  present  time,  for  a  full    100   miles  along  the 

taken  at  about  3,ooo,ocx),ooo  fir.  (;^i 20,000,000) — more  than  one-half  of 
the  war  contribution  levied  by  Germany.  It  must  have  largely  increased 
since  1876.     (See  Appendix  M.) 

*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  i.,  204. 


THE  POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE.  IO9 

Rhone,  and  in  the  lateral  valleys  of  the  Ardeche  and 
the  Drome,  the  country  is  an  admirable  orchard,  from 
which  millions'  worth  of  fruit  is  exported,  and  the  land 
attains  the  selling  price  of  from  £^2C,  to  ^^"400  the  acre* 
Small  plots  of  land  are  continually  reclaimed  for  culture 
upon  every  crag.  On  both  sides  of  the  roads  one  sees 
the  plantations  of  apricot  and  cherry  trees,  while  between 
the  rows  of  trees  early  beans  and  peas,  strawberries, 
and  all  sorts  of  early  vegetables  are  grown.  In  the 
spring  the  fine  perfume  of  the  apricot  trees  in  bloom 
floats  over  the  whole  valley.  Strawberries,  cherries, 
apricots,  peaches  and  grapes  follow  each  other  in  rapid 
succession,  and  at  the  same  time  cartloads  of  French 
beans,  salads,  cabbages,  leeks,  and  potatoes  are  sent 
towards  the  industrial  cities  of  the  region.  It  would  be 
impossible  to  estimate  the  quantity  and  value  of  all  that 
is  grown  in  that  region.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  a  tiny 
commune.  Saint  D^sirat,  exported  during  Ardouin  Du- 
mazet's  visit  about  20CX)  cwts.  of  cherries  every  day. 

I  must  refer  the  reader  to  the  work  of  Charles  Baltet 
if  he  will  know  more  about  the  extension  taken  by 
market-gardening  in  different  countries,  and  will  only 
mention  Belgium  and  America. 

The  exports  of  vegetables  from  Belgium  have  in- 
creased twofold  within  the  last  twenty  years,  and  whole 
regions,  like  Flanders,  claim  to  be  now  the  market- 
garden  of  England,  even  seeds  of  the  vegetables  pre- 
ferred in  this  country  being  distributed  free  by  one 
horticultural  society  in  order  to  increase  the  export. 
Not  only  the  best  lands  are  appropriated  for  that  pur- 
pose, but  even  the  sand  deserts  of  the  Ardennes  and 
peat-bogs  are  turned  into  rich  market-gardens,  while 
large  plains  (namely  at  Haeren)  are  irrigated  for  the 
same  purpose.  Scores  of  schools,  experimental  farms, 
and  small  experimental  stations,  evening  lectures,  and 

*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  vii.,  p.  125, 


no  FIELDS,   FACTORIES    AND   WORKSHOPS. 

SO  on,  are  opened  by  the  communes,  the  private  societies, 
and  the  State,  in  order  to  promote  horticulture,  and 
hundreds  of  acres  of  land  are  covered  with  thousands 
of  greenhouses.  Here  we  see  one  small  commune  ex- 
porting 5500  tons  of  potatoes  and  ;^4000  worth  of  pears, 
to  Stratford  and  Scotland,  and  keeping  for  that  purpose 
its  own  line  of  steamers.  Another  commune  supplies 
the  north  of  France  and  the  Rhenish  provinces  with 
strawberries,  and  occasionally  sends  some  of  them  to 
Covent  Garden  as  well.  Elsewhere  early  carrots,  which 
are  grown  amidst  flax,  barley  and  white  poppies,  give 
a  considerable  addition  to  the  farmer's  income.  In 
another  place  we  learn  that  land  is  rented  at  ;^24  and 
£2^  the  acre,  not  for  grapes  or  melon-growing  but  for 
the  modest  culture  of  onions;  or  that  the  gardeners 
have  done  away  with  such  a  nuisance  as  natural  soil  in 
their  frames,  and  prefer  to  make  their  loam  out  of  wood 
sawings,  tannery  refuse  and  hemp  dust,  "  animalised " 
by  various  composts.*  In  short,  Belgium,  which  is 
one  of  the  chief  manufacturing  countries  of  Europe,  is 
now  becoming  one  of  the  chief  centres  of  horticulture. 
(See  Appendix  N.) 

The  other  country  which  must  especially  be  recom- 
mended to  the  attention  of  horticulturists  is  America. 
When  we  see  the  mountains  of  fruit  imported  from 
America  we  are  inclined  to  think  that  fruit  in  that 
country  grows  by  itself.  "  Beautiful  climate,"  "  virgin 
soil,"  "  immeasurable  spaces  " — these  words  continually 
recur  in  the  papers.  The  reality,  however,  is  that  horti- 
culture— i.e.y  both  market-gardening  and  fruit  culture — 
has  been  brought  in  America  to  a  high  degree  of  per- 
fection. Prof.  Baltet,  a  practical  gardener  himself, 
originally  from  the  classical  marais  (market-gardens)  of 
Troyes,  describes  the  "  truck  farms  "  of  Norfolk  in  Vir- 

*  Charles  Baltet,  L'Hortiadture,  etc. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE.  Ill 

ginia  as  real  "  model  farms  ".  A  highly  complimentary 
appreciation  from  the  lips  of  a  practical  maraicher  who 
has  learned  from  his  infancy  that  only  in  fairyland  do 
the  golden  apples  grow  by  the  fairies'  magic  wand.  As 
to  the  perfection  to  which  apple-gnrowing  has  been 
brought  in  Canada,  the  aid  which  the  apple-growers 
receive  from  the  Canadian  experimental  farms,  and  the 
means  which  are  resorted  to,  on  a  truly  American  scale, 
to  spread  information  amongst  the  farmers  and  to  supply 
them  with  new  varieties  of  fruit  trees — all  this  ought  to 
be  carefully  studied  in  this  country,  instead  of  inducing 
Englishmen  to  believe  that  the  American  supremacy  is 
due  to  the  golden  fairies*  hands.  If  one-tenth  part  of 
what  is  done  in  the  States  and  in  Canada  for  favouring 
agriculture  and  horticulture  were  done  in  this  country, 
English  fruit  would  not  have  been  so  shamefully  driven 
out  of  the  market  as  it  is  at  the  present  time. 

The  extension  given  to  horticulture  in  America  is 
immense.  The  "  truck  farms  "  alone — i.e.,  the  farms 
which  work  for  export  by  rail  or  steam — covered  in  the 
States  in  1892  no  less  than  400,000  acres.  At  the  very 
doors  of  Chicago  one  single  market-gardening  farm 
covers  500  acres,  and  out  of  these,  150  acres  are  given 
to  cucumbers,  50  acres  to  early  peas,  and  so  on.  During 
the  Chicago  Exhibition  a  special  "  strawberry  express," 
composed  of  thirty  waggons,  brought  in  every  day 
324,000  quarts  of  the  freshly  gathered  fruit,  and  there 
are  days  that  over  10,000  bushels  of  strawberries 
are  imported  in  New  York — ^three-fourths  of  that 
amount  coming  from  the  "  truck  farms  "  of  Virginia  by 
steamer.* 

This  is  what  can  be  achieved  by  an  intelligent  com- 
bination of  agriculture  with  industry,  and  undoubtedly 
will  be  applied  on  a  still  larger  scale  in  the  future. 

However,  a  further  advance  is  being  made  in  order 

♦  Ch.  Baltet,  V Horticulture,  etc. 


112  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

to  emancipate  horticulture  from  climate.  I  mean  the 
glasshouse  culture  of  fruit  and  vegetables. 

Formerly  the  greenhouse  was  the  luxury  of  the  rich 
mansion.  It  was  kept  at  a  high  temperature,  and  was 
made  use  of  for  growing,  under  cold  skies,  the  golden 
fruit  and  the  bewitching  flowers  of  the  South.  Now, 
and  especially  since  the  progress  of  technics  allows  of 
making  cheap  glass  and  of  having  all  the  woodwork, 
sashes  and  bars  of  a  greenhouse  made  by  machinery, 
the  glasshouse  becomes  appropriated  for  growing  fruit 
for  the  million,  as  well  as  for  the  culture  of  common 
vegetables.  The  aristocratic  hothouse,  stocked  with  the 
rarest  fruit  trees  and  flowers,  remains;  nay,  it  spreads 
more  and  more  for  growing  luxuries  which  become  more 
and  more  accessible  to  the  great  number.  But  by  its 
side  we  have  the  plebeian  greenhouse,  which  is  heated 
for  only  a  couple  of  months  in  winter,  and  the  still  more 
economically  built  "  cool  greenhouse,"  which  is  a  simple 
glass  shelter — a  big  "  cool  frame  " — and  is  stuffed  with 
the  humble  vegetables  of  the  kitchen  garden:  the  po- 
tatoes, the  carrots,  the  French  beans,  the  peas  and  the 
like.  The  heat  of  the  sun,  passing  through  the  glass, 
but  prevented  by  the  same  glass  from  escaping  by  radia- 
tion, is  sufficient  to  keep  it  at  a  very  high  temperature 
during  spring  and  early  summer.  A  new  system  of 
horticulture — the  market-garden  under  glass — is  thus 
rapidly  gaining  ground. 

The  greenhouse  for  commercial  purposes  is  essenti- 
ally of  British,  or  perhaps  Scottish,  origin.  Already 
in  1 85 1,  Mr.  Th.  Rivers  had  published  a  book,  The 
Orchard  Houses  and  the  Cultivation  of  Fruit  Trees  in 
Pots  under  Glass.  And  we  are  told  by  Mr.  D.  Thomson, 
in  ^^  Journal  oj  Horticulture  (31st  January,  1889),  that 
nearly  fifty  years  ago  grapes  in  February  were  sold  at 
25s.  the  pound  by  a  grower  in  the  north  of  England, 
and  that  part  of  them  was  sent  by  the  buyer  to  Paris, 
for  Napoleon  III.'s  table,  at  50s.  the  pound.     "Now," 


THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF  AGRICULTURE.  113 

Mr.  Thomson  adds,  "  they  are  sold  at  the  tenth  or  twen- 
tieth part  of  the  above  prices.  Cheap  coal — cheap 
grapes  ;  that  is  the  whole  secret" 

Large  vineries  and  immense  establishments  for  grow- 
ing flowers  under  glass  are  of  an  old  standing  in  this 
country,  and  new  ones  are  continually  built  on  a  grand 
scale.  Entire  fields  are  covered  with  glass  at  Cheshunt, 
at  Broxburn  (fifty  acres),  at  Finchley,  at  Bexley,  at 
Swanley,  at  Whetstone,  and  so  on,  to  say  nothing  of 
Scotland.  Worthing  is  also  a  well-known  centre  for 
growing  grapes  and  tomatoes;  while  the  greenhouses 
given  to  flowers  and  ferns  at  Upper  Edmonton,  at  Chel- 
sea, at  Orpington,  and  so  on,  have  a  world-wide  reputa- 
tion. And  the  tendency  is,  on  the  one  side,  to  bring 
grape  culture  to  the  highest  degree  of  perfection,  and,  on 
the  other  side,  to  cover  acres  and  acres  with  glass  for 
growing  tomatoes,  French  beans  and  peas,  which  un- 
doubtedly will  soon  be  followed  by  the  culture  of  still 
plainer  vegetables. 

At  the  present  time  the-  Channel  Islands  and  Belgium 
take  the  lead  in  the  development  of  glasshouse  culture. 
The  glory  of  Jersey  is,  of  course,  Mr.  Bashford's  estab- 
lishment When  I  visited  it  in  1890,  it  contained 
490,000  square  feet  under  glass — that  is,  nearly  thirteen 
acres,  but  seven  more  acres  under  glass  have  been  added 
to  it  since.  A  long  row  of  glasshouses,  interspersed  with 
high  chimneys,  covers  the  ground — the  largest  of  the 
houses  being  900  feet  long  and  forty-six  feet  wide ; 
this  means  that  about  one  acre  of  land,  in  one  piece, 
is  under  glass.  The  whole  is  built  most  substantially : 
granite  walls,  great  height,  thick  "twenty-seven  oz. 
glass  "  (of  the  thickness  of  three  pennies),*  ventilators 
which  open  upon  a  length  of  200  and  300  feet  by  work- 
ing one  single  handle ;  and  so  on.  And  yet  the  most 
luxurious  of  these  greenhouses  was  said  by  the  owners 

• 

•  •*  Twenty-one  oz."  and  even  "  fifteen  oz."  glass  is  used  in  the  cheaper 
greenhouses. 

8 


114  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

to  have  cost  less  than  is.  the  square  foot  of  glass  (13d 
the  square  foot  of  ground),  while  the  other  houses  have 
cost  much  less  than  that  From  5d.  to  gd  the  square 
foot  of  glass  *  is  the  habitual  cost,  without  the  heating 
apparatus — 6d.  being  a  current  price  for  the  ordinary- 
glasshouses. 

But  it  would  be  hardly  possible  to  give  an  idea  of 
all  that  is  grown  in  such  glasshouses,  without  producing 
photographs  of  their  insides.  In  1890,  on  the  3rd  of 
May,  exquisite  grapes  began  to  be  cut  in  Mr.  Bashford's 
vineries,  and- the  crop  was  continued  till  October.  In 
other  houses,  cartloads  of  peas  had  already  been 
gathered,  and  tomatoes  were  going  to  take  their  place 
after  a  thorough  cleaning  of  the  house.  The  20,000 
tomato  plants,  which  were  going  to  be  planted,  had  to 
yield  no  less  than  eighty  tons  of  excellent  fruit  (eight 
to  ten  pounds  per  plant).  In  other  houses  melons  were 
grown  instead  of  the  tomatoes.  Thirty  tons  of  early 
potatoes,  six  tons  of  early  peas,  and  two  tons  of  early 
French  beans  had  already  been  sent  away  in  April.  As 
to  the  vineries,  they  yielded  no  less  than  twenty-five  tons 
of  grapes  every  year.  Besides,  very  many  other  things 
were  grown  in  the  open  air,  or  as  catch  crops,  and  all 
that  amount  of  fruit  and  vegetables  was  the  result  of 
the  labour  of  thirty-six  men  and  boys  only,  under  the 
supervision  of  one  single  gardener — the  owner  himself; 
true  that  in  Jersey,  and  especially  in  Guernsey,  every 
one  is  a  gardener.  About  1000  tons  of  coke  were  burnt 
to  heat  these  houses.  Mr.  W.  Bear,  who  has  visited  the 
same  establishment  in  1886,  was  quite  right  to  say  that 
from  these  thirteen  acres  they  obtained  money  returns 
equivalent  to  what  a  farmer  would  obtain  from  1300 
acres  of  land. 

However,  it  is  in  the  small  "  vineries  "  that  one  sees, 
perhaps,   the   most   admirable    results.       As    I    walked 

*  It  is  reckoned  by  measuring  the  height  of  the  front  and  back  walls 
and  the  length  of  the  two  slopes  of  the  roof. 


THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF  AGRICULTURE.  II 5 

through  such  glass-roofed  kitchen  gardens,  I  could  not 
but  admire  this  recent  conquest  of  man.  I  saw,  for  in- 
stance, three-fourths  of  an  acre  heated  for  the  first  three 
months  of  the  year,  from  which  about  eight  tons  of 
tomatoes  and  about  200  lb.  of  French  beans  had  been 
taken  as  a  first  crop  in  April,  to  be  followed  by  two 
crops  more.  In  these  houses  one  gardener  was 
employed  with  two  assistants,  a  small  amount  of  coke 
was  consumed,  and  there  was  a  gas  engine  for  watering 
purposes,  consuming  only  13  s.  worth  of  gas  during  the 
quarter.  I  saw  again,  in  cool  greenhouses — simple  plank 
and  glass  shelters — pea  plants  covering  the  walls,  for  the 
length  of  one  quarter  of  a  mile,  which  already  had 
yielded  by  the  end  of  April  3200  lb.  of  exquisite  peas 
and  were  yet  as  full  of  pods  as  if  not  one  had  been  taken 
off.  I  saw  potatoes  dug  from  the  soil  in  a  cool  green- 
house, in  April,  to  the  amount  of  five  bushels  to  the 
twenty-one  feet  square.  And  when  chance  brought  me, 
in  1896,  in  company  with  a  local  gardener,  to  a  tiny, 
retired  "  vinery  "  of  a  veteran  grower,  I  could  see  there, 
and  admire,  what  a  lover  of  gardening  can  obtain  from  so 
small  a  space  as  the  two-thirds  of  an  acre.  Two  small 
"  houses "  about  forty  feet  long  and  twelve  feet  wide, 
and  a  third — formerly  a  pigsty,  twenty  feet  by  twelve — 
contained  vine  trees  which  many  a  professional  gardener 
would  be  happy  to  have  a  look  at ;  especially  the  whilom 
pigsty,  fitted  with  "  Muscats  " !  Some  grapes  (in  June) 
were  already  in  full  beauty,  and  one  fully  understands 
that  the  owner  could  get  in  1895,  from  a  local  dealer, 
£/^  for  three  bunches  of  grapes  (one  of  them  was  a 
"  Colmar,"  13^^  lb.  weight).  The  tomatoes  and  straw- 
berries in  the  open  air,  as  well  as  the  fruit  trees,  all  on 
tiny  spaces,  were  equal  to  the  grapes ;  and  when  one  is 
shown  on  what  a  space  half  a  ton  of  strawberries  can  be 
gathered  xmder  proper  culture,  it  is  hardly  believable. 

It  is  especially  in  Guernsey  that  the   simplification 
of  the  greenhouse  must  be  studied     Every  house   in 


Il6  FIELDS,  FACTORIES  AND  WORKSHOPS. 

the  suburbs  of  St.  Peter  has  some  sort  of  greenhouse, 
big  or  small.  All  over  the  island,  especially  in  the  north, 
wherever  you  look,  you  see  greenhouses.  They  rise 
amid  the  fields  and  from  behind  the  trees;  they  are 
piled  upon  one  another  on  the  steep  crags  facing  the 
harbour  of  St.  Peter ;  and  with  them  a  whole  generation 
of  practical  gardeners  has  grown  up.  Every  farmer  is 
more  or  less  of  a  gardener,  and  he  gives  free  scope  to 
his  inventive  powers  for  devising  some  cheap  type  of 
greenhouses.  Some  of  them  have  almost  no  front  and 
back  walls — the  glass  roofs  coming  low  down  and  the 
two  or  three  feet  of  glass  in  front  simply  reaching  the 
ground ;  in  some  houses  the  lower  sheet  of  glass  was 
simply  plunged  into  a  wooden  trough  standing  on  the 
ground  and  filled  with  sand.  Many  houses  have  only 
two  or  three  planks,  laid  horizontally,  instead  of  the 
usual  stone  wall,  in  the  front  of  the  greenhouse.  The 
large  houses  of  one  big  company  are  built  close  to  each 
other,  and  have  no  partitions  between.  As  to  the  ex- 
tensive cool  greenhouses  on  the  Grande  Maison  estate, 
which  are  built  by  a  company  and  are  rented  to  gardeners 
for  so  much  the  lOO  feet,  they  are  simply  made  of  thin 
deal  board  and  glass.  They  are  on  the  "  lean  to  "  or 
"  one  roof "  system,  and  the  back  wall,  ten  feet  high, 
and  the  two  side  walls  are  in  simple  grooved  boards, 
standing  upright  The  whole  is  supported  by  uprights 
inserted  into  concrete  pillars.  They  are  said  to  cost  not 
more  than  5d.  the  square  foot,  of  glass-covered  ground. 
And  yet,  even  such  plain  and  cheap  houses  yield  ex- 
cellent results.  The  potato  crop  which  had  been  grown 
in  some  of  them  was  excellent,  as  also  the  green  peas.* 
In  Jersey  I  even  saw  a  row  of  five  houses,  the  walls  of 
which  were  made  of  corrugated  iron,  for  the  sake  of 
cheapness.  Of  course,  the  owner  himself  was  not  over- 
sanguine   about   his   houses.     "  They   are    too   cold   in 

*  Growing  peas  along  the  wall  seems,  however,  to  be  a  bad  system. 
It  requires  too  much  work  in  attaching  the  plants  to  the  wall. 


■8  s 

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o  « 

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5  o 

2  c 

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so 

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t)  bo 


O  bo 

s  e 


7   CO 

CO     CO 


•7!    to 


("7) 


Il8  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

winter  and  too  hot  in  summer/'  But  although  the  five 
houses  cover  only  less  than  one-fifth  of  an  acre,  2000  lb. 
of  green  peas  had  already  been  sold  as  a  first  crop; 
and,  in  the  first  days  of  June,  the  second  crop  (about 
1500  plants  of  tomatoes)  was  already  in  good  progress. 

It  is  always  difficult,  of  course,  to  know  what  are  the 
money  returns  of  the  growers,  first  of  all  because  Thorold 
Rogers'  complaint  about  modern  farmers  keeping  no 
accounts  holds  good,  even  for  the  best  gardening  estab- 
lishments, and  next  because  when  the  returns  are 
known  to  me  in  all  details  it  would  not  be  right  for  me 
to  publish  them.  Roughly  speaking,  I  can  confirm  Mr. 
Bear's  estimate  to  the  effect  that  under  proper  manage- 
ment even  a  cool  greenhouse,  which  covers  4050  square 
feet,  can  give  a  gross  return  of  ;^i8o.  "  Don't  prove  too 
much ;  beware  of  the  landlord !  "  a  practical  gardener 
once  wrote  to  me. 

As  a  rule,  the  Guernsey  and  Jersey  growers  have  only 
three  crops  every  year  from  their  greenhouses.  They 
will  start,  for  instance,  potatoes  in  December.  The 
house  will,  of  course,  not  be  heated,  fires  being  made 
only  when  a  sharp  frost  is  expected  at  night ;  and  the 
potato  crop  (from  eight  to  ten  tons  per  acre)  will  be 
ready  in  April  or  May  before  the  open-air  potatoes  begin 
to  be  dug  out  Tomatoes  will  be  planted  next  and  be 
ready  by  the  end  of  the  summer.  Various  catch  crops 
of  peas,  radishes,  lettuce  and  pther  small  things  will  be 
taken  in  the  meantime.  Or  else  the  house  will  be 
"  started "  in  November  with  melons,  which  will  be 
ready  in  April.  They  will  be  followed  by  tomatoes, 
either  in  pots,  or  trained  as  vines,  and  the  last  crop  of 
tomatoes  will  be  in  October.  Beans  may  follow  and 
be  ready  for  Christmas.  I  need  not  say  that  every 
grower  has  his  preference  method  for  utilising  his  houses, 
and  it  entirely  depends  upon  his  skill  and  watchfulness 
to  have  all  sorts  of  small  catch  crops.  These  last  begin 
to  have  a  greater  and  greater  importance,  and  one  can 


THE   POSSIBILITIES   OF  AGRICULTURE.  II9 

already  foresee  that  the  growers  under  glass  will  be 
forced  to  accept  the  methods  of  the  French  maraicherSy 
so  as  to  have  five  and  six  crops  every  year,  so  far  as  it 
can  be  done  without  spoiling  the  present  high  quality 
of  the  produce. 

All  this  industry  is  of  very  recent  origin.  One  may 
see  it  still  working  out  its  methods.  And  yet  the 
exports  from  Guernsey  alone  are  already  represented 
by  quite  extraordinary  figures.  It  was  estimated 
a  few  years  ago  that  they  were  as  follows :  Grapes, 
502  tons,  ;^37,500  worth  at  the  average  price  of  gd. 
the  pound ;  tomatoes,  1000  tons,  about  ;^30,ooo ;  early 
potatoes  (chiefly  in  the  fields),  ;^20,ooo ;  radishes  and 
broccoli,  ;^9250 ;  cut  flowers,  ;^3000 ;  mushrooms,  ;^200 ; 
total,  ;^99,950 — to  which  total  the  local  consumption  in 
the  houses  and  hotels,  which  have  to  feed  nearly  30,000 
tourists,  must  be  added.  But  now  these  figures  must 
have  grown  considerably.  In  June,  1896,'  I  saw  the 
Southampton  steamers  taking  every  day  from  9000  to 
12,000,  and  occasionally  more,  baskets  of  fruit  (grapes, 
tomatoes,  French  beans  and  peas),  each  basket  represent- 
ing from  twelve  to  fourteen  pounds  of  fruit  Taking 
into  account  what  was  sent  by  other  channels,  we  may 
thus  say  that  from  400  to  500  tons  of  tomatoes,  grapes, 
beans  and  peas,  worth  from  ii"20,ooo  to  ;^2 5,000,  are 
exported  every  week  in  June. 

All  this  is  obtained  from  an  island  whose  total  area, 
rocks  and  barren  hill-tops  included,  is  only  16,000  acres, 
of  which  only  9884  acres  are  under  culture,  and  5189 
acres  are  given  to  green  crops  and  meadows.  An  island, 
moreover,  on  which  1480  horses,  7260  head  of  cattle 
and  900  sheep  find  their  existence.  How  many  men's 
food  is,  then,  grown  on  these  10,000  acres  t 

Belgium  has  also  made,  within  the  last  few  years, 
an  immense  progress  in  the  same  direction.  While  no 
more  than  250  acres,  all  taken,  were  covered  with  glass 
some  twenty  years  ago,  more  than  800  acres  are  under 


I20  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

glass  by  this  time.*  In  the  village  of  Hoeilaert,  which 
is  perched  upon  a  stony  hill,  nearly  200  acres  are  under 
glass,  given  up  to  grape-growing.  One  single  estab- 
Hshment,  Baltet  remarks,  has  200  greenhouses  and  con- 
sumes 1 500  tons  of  coal  for  the  vineries.t  "  Cheap 
coals — cheap  grapes,"  as  the  editor  of  the  Journal  of 
Horticulture  wrote.  Grapes  in  Brussels  are  certainly 
not  dearer  in  the  beginning  of  the  summer  than  they 
are  in  Switzerland  in  October.  Even  in  March,  Belgian 
grapes  are  sold  in  Covent  Garden  at  from  4d.  and  6d.  the 
pound.+  This  price  alone  shows  sufficiently  how  small 
are  the  amounts  of  labour  which  are  required  to  grow 
grapes  in  our  latitudes  with  the  aid  of  glass.  It  certainly 
costs  less  labour  to  grow  grapes  in  Belgium  than  to  grow 
them  on  the  coasts  of  Lake  Leman. 

The  various  data  which  have  been  brought  together 
on  the  preceding  pages  make  short  work  of  the  over- 
population fallacy.  It  is  precisely  in  the  most  densely 
populated  parts  of  the  world  that  agriculture  has  lately 
made  such  strides  as  hardly  could  have  been  guessed 
twenty  years  ago.  A  dense  population,  a  high  develop- 
ment of  industry,  and  a  high  development  of  agriculture 
and  horticulture,  go  hand  in  hand :  they  are  inseparable. 
As  to  the  future,  the  possibilities  of  agriculture  are  such 
that,  in  truth,  we  cannpt  yet  foretell  what  would  be  the 
limit  of  the  population  which  could  live  from  the  produce 
of  a  given  area.  Recent  progress,  already  tested  on  a 
g^eat  scale,  has  widened  the  limits  of  agricultural  pro- 

*  I  take  these  figures  from  the  notes  which  a  Belgium  professor  of 
agriculture  was  kind  enough  to  send  me.  The  greenhouses  in  Belgium 
are  mostly  with  iron  frames. 

fA  friend,  who  has  studied  practical  horticulture  in  the  Channel 
Islands,  writes  me  of  the  vineries  about  Brussels  :  "  You  have  no  idea  to 
what  an  extent  it  is  done  there.     Bashford  is  nothing  against  it." 

\  A  quotation  which  I  took  at  random,  in  1895,  from  a  London  daily, 
was:  "  Covent  Garden,  19th  March,  1895.  Quotations:  Belgian  grapes, 
4d.  to  6d. ;  Jersey  ditto,  6d.  to  lod. ;  Muscats,  is.  6d.  to  2S.,  and  tomatoes, 
3d.  to  5d.  per  lb." 


THE    POSSIBILITIES   OF   AGRICULTURE.  121 

duction  to  a  quite  unforeseen  extent ;  and  recent  dis- 
coveries, now  tested  on  a  small  scale,  promise  to  widen 
tliose  limits  still  farther  to  a  quite  unknown  degree. 

The  present  tendency  of  economical  development  in 
the  world  is — ^we  have  seen — ^to  induce  more  and  more 
every  nation,  or  rather  every  region,  taken  in  its  geo- 
graphical sense,  to  rely  chiefly  upon  a  home  production 
of  all  the  chief  necessaries  of  life.  Not  to  reduce,  I 
mean,  the  world-exchange :  it  may  still  grow  in  bulk ; 
but  to  limit  it  to  the  exchange  of  what  really  must  be 
exchanged,  and,  at  the  same  time,  immensely  to  increase 
the  exchange  of  novelties,  produce  of  local  or  national 
art,  new  discoveries  and  inventions,  knowledge  and 
ideas.  Such  being  the  tendency  of  present  development, 
there  is  not  the  slightest  ground  to  be  alarmed  by  it 
There  is  not  one  nation  in  the  world  which,  being  armed 
with  the  present  powers  of  agriculture,  could  not  grow 
on  its  cultivable  area  all  the  food  and  most  of  the  raw 
materials  derived  from  agriculture  which  are  required 
for  its  population,  even  if  the  requirements  of  that  popu- 
lation were  rapidly  increased  as  they  certainly  ought  to 
be.  Taking  the  powers  of  man  over  the  land  and  over 
the  forces  of  nature — such  as  they  are  at  the  -present  day 
— ^we  can  maintain  that  two  to  three  inhabitants  to  each 
cultivable  acre  of  land  would  not  yet  be  too  much.  But 
neither  in  this  densely  populated  country  nor  in  Bel- 
gium are  we  yet  in  such  numbers.  In  this  country 
we  have,  roughly  speaking,  one  acre  of  the  cultivable 
area  per  inhabitant 

Supposing,  then,  that  each  inhabitant  of  Great  Britain 
were  compelled  to  live  on  the  produce  of  his  own  land, 
all  he  would  have  to  do  would  be,  first,  to  consider  the 
land  of  this  country  as  a  common  inheritance,  which 
must  be  disposed  of  to  the  best  advantage  of  each  and 
all — this  is,  evidently,  an  absolutely  necessary  conditioa 
And  next,  he  would  have  to  cultivate  his  soil,  not  in  some 
extravagant  way,  but  no  better  than   land  is  already 


122  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

cultivated  upon  thousands  and  thousands  of  acres  in 
Europe  and  America.  He  would  not  be  bound  to  in- 
vent some  new  methods,  but  could  simply  generalise  and 
widely  apply  those  which  have  stood  the  test  of  experi- 
ence. He  can  do  it ;  and  in  so  doing  he  would  save 
an  immense  quantity  of  the  work  which  is  now  given 
for  buying  his  food  abroad,  and  for  paying  all  the 
intermediaries  who  live  upon  this  trade.  Under  a 
rational  culture,  those  necessaries  and  those  luxuries 
which  must  be  obtained  from  the  soil,  undoubtedly  can 
be  obtained  with  much  less  work  than  is  required  now 
for  buying  these  commodities.  1  have  made  elsewhere 
(in  La  ConquHe  du  Pain)  approximate  calculations  to 
that  effect,  but  with  the  data  given  in  this  book  every  one 
can  himself  easily  test  the  truth  of  this  assertion.  If 
we  take,  indeed,  the  masses  of  produce  which  are  ob- 
tained under  rational  culture,  and  compare  them  with  the 
amount  of  labour  which  must  be  spent  for  obtaining 
them  under  an  irrational  culture,  for  collecting  them 
abroad,  for  transporting  them,  and  for  keeping  armies 
of  middlemen,  we  see  at  once  how  few  days  and  hours 
need  be  given,  under  proper  culture,  for  growing  man's 
food. 

For  improving  our  methods  of  culture  to  that  ex- 
tent, we  surely  need  not  divide  the  land  into  one-acre 
plots,  and  attempt  to  grow  what  we  are  in  need  of  by 
every  one's  separate  individual  exertions,  on  every  one's 
separate  plot  with  no  better  tools  than  the  spade ; 
under  such  conditions  we  inevitably  should  fail.  Those 
who  have  been  so  much  struck  with  the  wonderful 
results  obtained  in  the  petite  culture,  that  they  go  about 
representing  the  small  culture  of  the  French  peasant, 
or  maraicher,  as  an  ideal  for  mankind,  are  evidently 
mistaken.  They  are  as  much  mistaken  as  those  other 
extremists  who  would  like  to  turn  every  country  into  a 
small  number  of  huge  Bonanza  farms,  worked  by  mili- 
tarily organised  "  labour  battalions  ".     In  Bonanza  farms 


THE    POSSIBILITIES  OF   AGRICULTURE.  I23 

human  labour  is  reduced,  but  the  crops  taken  from  the 
soil  are  far  too  small,  and  the  whole  system  is  robbery- 
culture  taking  no  heed  of  the  exhaustion  of  the  soil ; 
while  in  the  fetite  culture,  on  isolated  small  plots,  by 
isolated  men  or  families,  too  much  of  human  labour  is 
wasted  even  though  the  crops  are  heavy.  Real  economy, 
of  both  space  and  labour,  requires  quite  different 
methods,  representing  a  combination  of  machinery  work 
with  hand  work. 

In  agriculture,  as  in  everything  else,  associated  labour 
is  the  only  reasonable  solution.  Two  hundred  families 
of  five  persons  each,  owning  five  acres  per  family,  hav- 
ing no  common  ties  between  the  families,  and  compelled 
to  find  their  living,  each  family  on  its  five  acres,  almost 
certainly  would  be  an  economical  failure.  Even  leaving 
aside  all  personal  difficulties  resulting  from  different 
education  and  tastes  and  from  the  want  of  knowledge 
as  to  what  has  to  be  done  with  the  land,  and  admitting 
for  the  sake  of  argument  that  these  causes  do  not  inter- 
fere, the  experiment  would  end  in  a  failure,  merely  for 
economical^  for  agricultural  reasons.  Whatever  im- 
provement upon  the  present  conditions  such  an  organisa- 
tion might  be,  that  improvement  would  not  last ;  it  would 
have  to  undergo  a  further  transformation  or  disappccir. 

But  the  same  two  hundred  families,  if  they  consider 
themselves,  say,  as  tenants  of  the  nation,  and  treat  the 
thousand  acres  as  a  common  tenancy — again  leaving 
aside  the  personal  conditions — would  have,  economically 
speaking,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  agriculturist, 
every  chance  of  succeeding,  if  they  know  what  is  the  best 
use  to  make  of  that  land. 

In  such  case  they  probably  would  first  of  all  associate 
for  permanently  improving  the  land  which  required  im- 
mediate improvement,  and  would  consider  it  necessary 
to  improve  more  of  it  every  year,  until  they  had  brought 
it  all  into  a  perfect  condition.  On  an  area  of  340  acres 
they  could  most  easily  grow  all  the  cereals — wheat,  oats 


124  FIELDS,  FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

etc. — required  for  both  the  thousand  inhabitants  and 
their  live  stock — without  resorting  for  that  purpose  to 
replanted  or  planted  cereals.  They  could  grow  on  400 
acres,  properly  cultivated,  and  irrigated  if  necessary 
and  possible,  all  the  green  crops  and  fodder  required  to 
keep  the  thirty  to  forty  milch  cows  which  would  supply 
them  with  milk  and  butter,  and,  let  us  say,  the  300  head 
of  cattle  required  to  supply  them  with  meat  On  twenty 
acres,  two  of  which  would  be  under  glass,  they  would 
grow  more  vegetables,  fruit  and  luxuries  than  they  could 
consume.  And  supposing  that  half  an  acre  of  land  is 
attached  to  each  house — for  hobbies  and  amusement 
(poultry-keeping,  or  any  fancy  culture,  flowers,  and  the 
like) — they  would  still  have  some  140  acres  for  all  sorts 
of  purposes :  public  gardens,  squares,  manufactures  and 
so  on.  The  labour  that  would  be  required  for  such  an 
intensive  culture  would  not  be  the  hard  labour  of  the 
serf  or  slave.  It  would  be  accessible  to  every  one, 
strong  or  weak,  town  bred  or  country  born;  it  would 
also  have  many  charms  besides.  And  its  total  amount 
would  be  far  smaller  than  the  amount  of  labour  which 
every  thousand  persons,  taken  from  this  or  from  any 
other  nation,  have  now  to  spend  in  getting  their  present 
food,  much  smaller  in  quantity  and  of  worse  quality. 
I  mean,  of  course,  the  technically  necessary  labour, 
without  even  considering  the  labour  which  we  now  have 
to  give  in  order  to  maintain  all  our  middlemen,  armies, 
and  the  like.  The  amount  of  labour  required  to  grow 
food  under  a  rational  culture  is  so  small,  indeed,  that 
our  hypothetical  inhabitants  would  be  led  necessarily 
to  employ  their  leisure  in  manufacturing,  artistic,  scien- 
tific, and  other  pursuits. 

From  the  technical  point  of  view  there  is  no  obstacle 
whatever  for  such  an  organisation  being  started  to- 
morrow with  full  success.  The  obstacles  against  it  are 
not  in  the  imperfection  of  the  agricultural  art,  or  in  the 
infertility  of  the  soil,  or  in  climate.     They  are  entirely 


THE   POSSIBILITIES  OF   AGRICULTURE.  125 

in  our  institutions,  in  our  inheritances  and  survivals  from 
the  past — in  the  "  Ghosts  "  which  oppress  us.  But  to 
some  extent  they  lie  also — taking  society  as  a  whole — 
in  our  phenomenal  ignorance.  We  civilised  men  and 
women  know  everything,  we  have  settled  opinions  upon 
everything,  we  take  an  interest  in  everything.  We  only 
know  nothing  about  whence  the  bread  comes  which  we 
eat — even  though  we  pretend  to  know  something  about 
that  subject  as  well — we  do  not  know  how  it  is  grown, 
what  pains  it  costs  to  those  who  grow  it,  what  is  being 
done  to  reduce  their  pains,  what  sort  of  men  those 
feeders  of  our  grand  selves  are  ...  we  are  more  ig- 
norant than  savages  in  this  respect,  and  we  prevent  our 
children  from  obtaining  this  sort  of  knowledge — even 
those  of  our  children  who  would  prefer  it  to  the  heaps 
of  useless  stuff  with  which  they  are  crammed  at  school 


CHAPTER  VI. 

SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND  INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 

Industry  and  agriculture — The  small  industries — Different  types — Pttty 
trades  in  Great  Britain :  Sheffield ;  Lake  District ;  Birmingham— 
Petty  trades  in  France — Weaving  and  various  others — The  Lyon? 
region — Paris,  emporium  of  petty  trades. 

The  two  sister  arts  of  agriculture  and  industry  were 
not  always  so  estranged  from  one  another  as  they  are 
now.  There  was  a  time,  and  that  time  is  not  so  far 
back,  when  both  were  thoroughly  combined :  the  vil- 
lages were  then  the  seats  of  a  variety  of  industries, 
and  the  artisans  in  the  cities  did  not  abandon  agri- 
culture ;  many  towns  were  nothing  else  but  industrial 
villages.  If  the  mediaeval  city  was  the  cradle  of  those 
industries  which  bordered  upon  art  and  were  intended 
to  supply  the  wants  of  the  richer  classes,  still  it  was 
the  rural  manufacture  which  supplied  the  wants  of 
the  million,  as  it  does  until  the  present  day  in  Russia, 
and  to  a  very  great  extent  in  Germany  and  France. 
But  then  came  the  water-motors,  steam,  the  develop- 
ment of  machinery,  and  they  broke  the  link  which 
formerly  connected  the  farm  with  the  workshop. 
Factories  grew  up  and  they  abandoned  the  fields. 
They  gathered  where  the  sale  of  their  produce  was 
easiest,  or  the  raw  materials  and  fuel  could  be  obtained 
with  the  greatest  advantage.  New  cities  rose,  and  the 
old  ones  rapidly  enlarged;  the  fields  were  deserted. 
Millions  of  labourers,  driven  away  by  sheer  force  from 
the  land,  gathered  in  the  cities  in  search  of  labour,  and 

(126) 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL   VILLAGES.        1 27 

soon  forgot  the  bonds  which  formerly  attached  them  to 
the  soil.  And  we,  in  our  admiration  of  the  prodigies 
achieved  under  the  new  factory  system,  overlooked  the 
advantages  of  the  old  system  under  which  the  tiller 
of  the  soil  was  an  industrial  worker  at  the  same  time. 
We  doomed  to  disappearance  all  those  branches  of  in- 
dustry which  formerly  used  to  prosper  in  the  villages ; 
we  condemned  as  industry  all  that  was  not  a  big 
factory. 

True,  the  results  were  grand  as  regards  the  increase 
of  the  productive  powers  of  man.  But  they  proved 
terrible  as  regards  the  millions  of  human  beings  who 
were  plunged  into  misery  and  had  to  rely  upon  precarious 
means  of  Hving  in  our  cities.  Moreover,  the  system,  as 
a  whole,  brought  about  those  abnormal  conditions  which 
I  have  endeavoured  to  sketch  in  the  two  first  chapters. 
We  are  thus  driven  into  a  corner ;  and  while  a  thorough 
change  in  the  present  relations  between  labour  and 
capital  is  becoming  an  imperious  necessity,  a  thorough 
remodelling  of  the  whole  of  our  industrial  organisation 
has  also  become  unavoidable.  The  industrial  nations 
are  bound  to  revert  to  agriculture,  they  are  compelled 
to  find  out  the  best  means  of  combining  it  with  industry, 
and  they  must  do  so  without  loss  of  time. 

To  examine  the  special  question  as  to  the  possibility 
of  such  a  combination  is  the  aim  of  the  following  pages. 
Is  it  possible,  from  a  technical  point  of  view  ?  Is  it 
desirable .?  Are  there,  in  our  present  industrial  life,  such 
features  as  might  lead  us  to  presume  that  a  change  in 
the  above  direction  would  find  the  necessary  elements 
for  its  accomplishment.?  Such  are  the  questions  which 
rise  before  the  mind.  And  to  answer  them,  there  is, 
I  suppose,  no  better  means  than  to  study  that  immense 
but  overlooked  and  underrated  branch  of  industries 
which  are  described  under  the  names  of  rural  industries, 
domestic  trades,  and  petty  trades :  to  study  them,  not  in 
the  works  of  the  economists  who  are  too  much  inclined 


128  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

to  consider  them  as  obsolete  types  of  industry,  but  in 
their  life  itself,  in  their  struggles,  their  failures  and 
achievements. 

The  variety  of  forms  of  organisation  which  prevails 
in  the  small  industries  is  hardly  suspected  by  those 
who  have  not  made  them  a  subject  of  special  study. 
There  are,  first,  two  broad  categories:  those  industries 
which  are  carried  on  in  the  villages,  in  connection  with 
agriculture ;  and  those  which  are  carried  on  in  towns 
or  in  villages,  with  no  connection  with  the  land — the 
workers  depending  for  their  earnings  exclusively  upon 
their  industrial  work.  In  Russia,  in  France,  in  Germany, 
in  Austria,  and  so  on,  millions  and  millions  of  workers 
are  in  the  first  case.  They  are  owners  or  occupiers  of 
the  land,  they  keep  one  or  two  cows,  very  often  horses, 
and  they  cultivate  their  fields,  or  their  orchards,  or 
gardens,  considering  industrial  work  as  a  by-occupation. 
In  those  regions,  especially,  where  the  winter  is  long 
and  no  work  on  the  land  is  possible  for  several  months 
every  year,  this  form  of  small  industries  is  widely  spread. 
In  this  country,  on  the  contrary,  we  find  the  opposite 
extreme.  Few  small  industries  have  survived  in  Eng- 
land in  connection  with  land-cultiire ;  but  hundreds  of 
petty  trades  are  found  in  the  suburbs  and  the  slums 
of  the  big  cities,  and  large  portions  of  the  populations 
of  several  towns,  such  as  Sheffield  and  Birmingham, 
find  their  living  in  a  variety  of  petty  trades.  Between 
these  two  extremes  there  is  evidently  a  mass  of  inter- 
mediate forms,  according  to  the  more  or  less  close  ties 
which  continue  to  exist  with  the  land.  Large  villages, 
and  even  towns,  are  thus  peopled  with  workers  who 
are  engaged  in  small  trades,  but  most  of  whom  have 
a  small  garden,  or  an  orchard,  or  a  field,  or  only  re- 
tain some  rights  of  pasture  on  the  commons,  while  part 
of  them  live  exclusively  upon  their  industrial  earnings. 

With  regard  to  the  sale  of  the  produce,  the  small 
industries  offer  the  same  variety  of  organisation.     Here 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       129 

again  there  are  two  great  branches.  In  one  of  them 
the  worker  sells  his  produce  directly  to  the  wholesale 
dealer;  cabinet-makers  and  part  of  the  workers  in  the 
toy  trade  are  in  this  case.  In  the  other  great  division 
the  worker  works  for  a  "  master  "  who  either  sells  the 
produce  to  a  wholesale  dealer,  or  simply  acts  as  a 
middleman  who  himself  receives  his  orders  from  some 
big  concern.  This  is  the  "  sweating  system,"  properly 
speaking,  under  which  we  find  a  mass  of  small  trades : 
part  of  the  toy  trade,  the  tailors  who  work  for  big 
clothing  establishments — very  often  for  those  of  the 
State — the  women  who  sew  and  embroider  the  "  uppers  " 
for  the  boot  and  shoe  factories,  and  who  as  often  deal 
with,  the  factory  as  with  an  intermediary  "sweater," 
and  so  on.  All  possible  gradations  of  feudalisation  and 
sub-feudalisation  of  labour  are  evidently  found  in  that 
organisation  of  the  sale  of  the  produce. 

Again,  when  the  industrial,  or  rather  technical  aspects 
of  the  small  industries  are  considered,  the  same  variety 
of  types  is  soon  discovered.  Here  also  there  are  two 
great  branches :  those  trades,  on  the  one  side,  which  are 
purely  domestic — that  is,  those  which  are  carried  on  in 
the  house  of  the  worker,  with  the  aid  of  his  family,  or  of 
a  couple  of  wage-workers ;  and  those  which  are  carried 
on  in  separate  workshops — all  the  just-mentioned 
varieties,  as  regards  connection  with  land  and  the  divers 
modes  of  disposing  of  the  produce,  being  met  with  in 
both  these  branches.  All  possible  trades — ^weaving, 
workers  in  wood,  in  metals,  in  bone,  in  india-rubber,  and 
so  on — may  be  found  under  the  category  of  purely  do- 
mestic trades,  with  all  possible  gradations  between  the 
purely  domestic  form  of  production  and  the  workshop 
and  the  factory. 

Thus,  by  the  side  of  the  trades  which  are  carried 
on  entirely  at  home  by  one  or  more  members  of  the 
family,  there  are  the  trades  in  which  the  master  keeps 
a  small  workshop  attached  to  his  house,  where  he  works 

9 


I30  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND  WORKSHOPS. 

with  his  family,  or  with  a  few  "  assistants,"  i.e.,  wage- 
workers.  Or  else  the  artisan  has  a  separate  workshop, 
supplied  with  wheel-power,  as  is  the  case  with  the  Shef- 
field cutlers.  Or  several  workers  come  together  in  a 
small  factory  which  they  maintain  themselves,  or  hire 
in  association,  or  where  they  are  allowed  to  work  for  a 
certain  weekly  rent.  And  in  each  of  these  cases  they 
work  either  directly  for  the  dealer  or  for  a  small  master, 
or  for  a  middleman.  A  further  development  of  this 
system  is  the  big  factory,  especially  of  ready-made  cloth, 
in  which  hundreds  of  women  pay  so  much  for  the  sewing- 
machine,  the  gas,  the  gas-heated  irons,  and  so  on,  and 
are  paid  themselves  so  much  for  each  piece  of  the 
ready-made  cloth  they  sew,  or  each  part  of  it.  Immense 
factories  of  this  kind  exist  in  England,  and  it  appeared 
from  testimony  given  before  the  "  Sweating  Conmiittee  " 
that  women  are  fearfully  "  sweated  "  in  such  workshops 
— the  full  price  of  each  slightly  spoiled  piece  of  cloth- 
ing being  deducted  from  their  very  low  piecework  wages. 
And,  finally,  there  is  the  small  workshop  (often  with 
hired  wheel-power)  in  which  a  master  employs  three 
to  ten  workers,  who  are  paid  in  wages,  and  sells  his 
produce  to  a  bigger  employer  or  merchant — there  being 
all  possible  gradations  between  such  a  workshop  and  the 
small  factory  in  which  a  few  time  workers  (hwe,  ten  to 
twenty)  are  employed  by  an  independent  producer. 
Moreover,  in  the  textile  trades,  weaving  is  often  done 
either  by  the  family  or  by  a  master  who  employs  one 
boy  only,  or  several  weavers,  and  after  having  received 
the  yam  from  a  big  employer,  pays  a  skilled  workman 
to  put  the  yarn  in  the  loom,  invents  what  is  necessary 
for  weaving  a  given,  sometimes  very  complicated  pattern, 
and  after  having  woven  the  cloth  or  the  ribbons  in  his 
own  loom  or  in  a  loom  which  he  hires  himself,  he  is  paid 
for  the  piece  of  cloth  according  to  a  very  complicated 
scale  of  wages  agreed  to  between  masters  and  workers. 
This  last  form,  we  shall  see  presently,  is  widely  spread 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       131 

until  now,  especially  in  the  woollen  and  silk  trades,  by 
the  side  of  big  factories  in  which  50,  1 00,  or  5000  wage- 
workers,  as  the  case  may  be,  are  working  with  the 
employers'  machinery  and  are  paid  in  time-wages  so 
much  the  day  or  the  week. 

The  small  industries  are  thus  quite  a  world,  which, 
remarkable  enough,  continues  to  exist  even  in  the  most 
industrial  countries,  side  by  side  with  the  big  factories. 
Into  this  world  we  must  now  penetrate  to  cast  a  glimpse 
upon  it :  a  glimpse  only,  because  it  would  take  volumes 
to  describe  its  infinite  variety  of  pursuits  and  organisa- 
tion, and  its  infinitely  varied  connection,  with  agriculture 
as  well  as  with  other  industries. 

Most  of  the  petty  trades,  except  some  of  those  which 
are  connected  with  agriculture,  are,  we  must  admit,  in  a 
very  precarious  position.  The  earnings  are  very  low, 
and  the  employment  is  often  uncertain.  The  day  of 
labour  is  by  two,  three,  or  four  hours  longer  than  it  is  in 
well-organised  factories,  and  at  certain  seasons  it  reaches 
an  almost  incredible  length.  The  crises  are  frequent  and 
last  for  years.  Altogether,  the  worker  is  much  more  at 
the  mercy  of  the  dealer,  or  the  employer,  and  the  em- 
ployer is  at  the  mercy  of  the  wholesale  dealer.  Both 
are  liable  to  become  enslaved  to  the  latter,  running  into 
debt  to  him.  In  some  of  the  petty  trades,  especially 
in  the  fabrication  of  the  plain  textiles,  the  workers  are 
in  dreadful  misery.  But  those  who  pretend  that  such 
misery  is  the  rule  are  totally  wrong.  Any  one  who  has 
lived  among,  let  us  say,  the  watchmakers  in  Switzerland 
and  knows  their  inner  family  life,  will  recognise  that  the 
condition  of  these  workers  is  out  of  all  comparison 
superior,  in  every  respect,  material  and  moral,  to  the 
conditions  of  millions  of  factory  hands.  Even  during 
such  a  crisis  in  the  watch  trade  as  was  lived  through 
in  1876-80,  their  condition  was  preferable  to  the  con- 
dition of  factory  hands  during  a  crisis  in  the  woollen 


132  FIELDS,  FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

or  cotton  trade ;  and  the  workers  perfectly  well  knew 
it  themselves. 

Whenever  a  crisis  breaks  out  in  some  branch  of 
the  petty  trades  there  is  no  lack  of  writers  to  predict 
that  that  trade  is  going  to  disappear.  During  the  crisis 
which  I  witnessed  in  1877  amidst  the  Swiss  watch- 
makers, the  impossibility  of  a  recovery  of  the  trade  in 
the  face  of  the  competition  of  machine-made  watches 
was  a  current  topic  in  the  press.  The  same  was  said  in 
1882  with  regard  to  the  silk  trade  of  Lyons,  and,  in  fact, 
wherever  a  crisis  has  broken  out  in  the  petty  trades. 
And  yet,  notwithstanding  the  gloomy  predictions,  and 
the  still  gloomier  prospects  of  the  workers,  that  form 
of  industry  does  not  disappear.  Nay,  we  find  it  endowed 
with  an  astonishing  vitality.  It  undergoes  various  modi- 
fications, it  adapts  itself  to  new  conditions,  it  struggles 
without  losing  hope  of  better  times  to  come.  Anyhow, 
it  has  not  the  characteristics  of  a  decaying  institution. 
In  some  industries  the  factory  is  undoubtedly  victorious ; 
but  there  are  other  branches  in  which  the  petty  trades 
hold  their  own  position.  Even  in  the  textile  industries, 
which  offer  so  many  advantages  for  the  factory  system, 
the  hand-loom  still  competes  with  the  power-loom. 

As  a  whole,  the  transformation  of  the  petty  trades 
into  great  industries  goes  on  with  a  slowness  which 
cannot  fail  to  astonish  even  those  who  are  convinced 
of  its  necessity.  Nay,  sometimes  we  may  even  see  the 
reverse  movement  going  on — occasionally,  of  course,  and 
only  for  a  time.  I  cannot  forget  my  amazement  when 
I  saw  at  Verviers,  some  twenty  years  ago,  that  most  of 
the  woollen  cloth  factories — immense  barracks  facing  the 
streets  by  more  than  a  hundred  windows  each — were 
silent,  and  their  costly  machinery  was  rusting,  while 
cloth  was  woven  in  hand-looms  in  the  weavers'  houses, 
for  the  owners  of  those  very  same  factories.  Here  we 
have,  of  course,  but  a  temporary  fact,  fully  explained  by 
the   spasmodic   character  of  the  trade  and   the   heavy 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES  AND  INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       1 33 

losses  sustained  by  the  owners  of  the  factories  when 
they  cannot  run  their  mills  all  the  year  round  But  it 
illustrates  the  obstacles  which  the  transformation  has 
to  comply  with.  As  to  the  silk  trade,  it  continues  to 
spread  over  Europe  in  its  rural  industry  shape ;  while 
hundreds  of  new  petty  trades  appear  every  year,  and 
when  they  find  nobody  to  carry  them  on  in  the  villages 
— as  is  the  case  in  this  country — they  shelter  themselves 
in  the  suburbs  of  the  great  cities,  as  we  have  lately 
learned  from  the  inquiry  into  the  "  sweating  system  ". 

Now,  the  advantages  offered  by  a  large  factory  in 
comparison  with  hand  work  are  self-evident  as  regards 
the  economy  of  labour,  and  especially  the  facilities 
both  for  sale  and  for  having  the  raw  produce  at  a  lower 
price.  How  can  we  then  explain  the  persistence  of  the 
petty  trades?  Many  causes,  however,  most  of  which 
cannot  be  valued  in  shillings  and  pence,  are  at  work  in 
favour  of  the  petty  trades,  and  these  causes  will  be  best 
seen  from  the  following  illustrations.  I  must  say,  how- 
ever, that  even  a  brief  sketch  of  the  countless  industries 
which  are  carried  on  on  a  small  scale  in  this  country, 
and  on  the  Continent,  would  be  far  beyond  the  scope  of 
this  chapter.  When  I  began  to  study  the  subject  some 
fifteen  years  ago,  I  never  guessed,  from  the  little  atten- 
tion devoted  to  it  by  the  orthodox  economists,  what  a 
wide,  complex,  important,  and  interesting  organisation 
would  appear  at  the  end  of  a  closer  inquiry.  So  I  see 
myself  compelled  to  give  here  only  a  few  typical  illus- 
trations, and  to  indicate  the  chief  lines  only  of  the 
subject 

Petty  Trades  in  Great  Britain, 

As  far  as  I  know,  there  are  in  this  country  no  statistics 
as  to  the  exact  numbers  of  workers  engaged  in  the 
domestic  trades,  the  rural  industries,  and  the  petty 
trades.       The   whole   subject   has   never   received   the 


134  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

attention  bestowed  upon  it  in  Germany,  and  especially 
in  Russia.  And  yet  we  can  guess  that  even  in  this 
country  of  great  industries,  the  numbers  of  those  who 
earn  their  livelihood  in  the  petty  trades  most  probably 
equal,  if  they  do  not  surpass,  the  numbers  of  those 
employed  in  the  factories.*  We  know,  at  any  rate,  that 
the  suburbs  of  London,  Glasgow,  and  other  great  cities 
swarm  with  small  workshops,  and  there  are  regions  where 
the  petty  trades  are  as  developed  as  they  are  in  Switzer- 
land or  in  Germany.  Sheffield  is  a  well-known  example 
in  point  The  Sheffield  cutlery — one  of  the  glories  of 
England — is  nol  made  by  machinery :  it  is  chiefly  made 
by  hand  There  are  at  Sheffield  a  few  firms  which 
manufacture  cutlery  right  through  from  the  making  of 
steel  to  the  finishing  of  tools,  and  employ  wage-workers  ; 
and  yet  even  these  firms — I  am  told  by  Edward  Car- 
penter, who  kindly  collected  for  me  information  about 
the  Sheffield  trade — let  out  some  part  of  their  work  to 
the  "  small  masters  ".  But  by  far  the  greatest  number 
of  the  cutlers  work  in  their  homes  with  their  relatives, 
or  in  small  workshops  supplied  with  wheel-power,  which 
they  rent  for  a  few  shillings  a  week.  Immense  yards 
are  covered  with  buildings,  which  are  subdivided  into 
numbers  of  small  workshops.  Some  of  these  cover  but 
a  few  square  yards,  and  there  I  saw  smiths  hammering, 
all  the  day  long,  blades  of  knives  on  a  small  anvil,  close 
by  the  blaze  of  their  fires ;  occasionally  the  smith  may 
have  one  helper,  or  two.  In  the  upper  storeys  scores  of 
small  workshops  are  supplied  with  wheel-power,  and 
in  each  of  them,  three,  four,  or  five  workers  and  a 
"  master "  fabricate,  with  the  occasional  aid  of  a  few 
plain  machines,  every  description  of  tools:   files,  saws, 

•  We  find  it  stated  in  various  economic  works  that  there  au-c  nearly 
1,000,000  workers  employed  in  the  big  factories  of  England  alone,  and 
1,047,000  employed  in  the  petty  trades— the  various  trades  connected 
with  food  (bakers,  butchers,  and  so  on)  and  the  building  trades  being 
included  in  the  last  figure.  But  I  do  not  know  how  far  these  figures  are 
reliable. 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       1 35 

blades  of  knives,  razors,  and  so  on.  Grinding  and  glaz- 
ing are  done  in  other  small  workshops,  and  even  steel 
is  cast  in  a  small  foundry,  the  working  staff  of  which 
consists  only  of  five  or  six  men.  When  walking  through 
these  workshops  I  easily  imagined  myself  in  a  Russian 
cutlery  village,  like  Pavlovo  or  Vorsma.  The  Sheffield 
cutlery  has  thus  maintained  its  olden  organisation,  and 
the  fact  is  the  more  remarkable  as  the  earnings  of  the 
cutlers  are  low  as  a  rule ;  but,  even  when  reduced  to  a 
few  shillings  a  week,  the  cutler  prefers  to  vegetate  on  his 
small  earnings  than  to  enter  as  a  waged  laboiurer  in  a 
"house".  The  spirit  of  the  old  trade  organisations, 
which  were  so  much  spoken  of  five-and-twenty  years 
ago,  is  thus  still  alive. 

Until  lately,  Leeds  and  its  environs  were  also  the 
seat  of  extensive  domestic  industries.  When  Edward 
Baines  wrote,  in  1857,  his  first  account  of  the  Yorkshire 
industries  (in  Th.  Baines's  Yorkshire^  Past  and  Present), 
most  of  the  woollen  cloth  which  was  made  in  that  region 
was  woven  by  hand.*  Twice  a  week  the  hand-made 
cloth  was  brought  to  the  Clothiers'  Hall,  and  by  noon 
it  was  sold  to  the  merchants,  who  had  it  dressed  in  their 
factories.  Joint-stock  mills  were  run  by  combined 
clothiers  in  order  to  prepare  and  spin  the  wool,  but  it 
was  woven  in  the  hand-looms  by  the  clothiers  and  the 
members  of  their  families.  Twelve  years  later  the  hand- 
loom  was  superseded  to  a  great  extent  by  the  power- 
loom;  but  the  clothiers,  who  were  anxious  to  maintain 
their  independence,  resorted  to  a  peculiar  organisation : 
they  rented  a  room,  or  part  of  a  room,  and  sometimes  also 
the  power-looms  in  a  workshop,  and  they  worked  inde- 
pendently— a  characteristic  organisation  partly  main- 
tained  until   now,   and  well  adapted   to   illustrate   the 


•  Nearly  one-half  of  the  43,000  operatives  who  were  employed  at 
that  time  in  the  woollen  trade  of  this  country  were  weaving  in  hand- 
looms.  So  also  one-fifth  of  the  79,000  persons  employed  in  the  worsted 
trade. 


136  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

efforts  of  the  petty  traders  to  keep  their  ground,  not- 
withstanding the  competition  of  the  factory.  And  it 
must  be  said  that  the  triumphs  of  the  factory  were  too 
often  achieved  only  by  means  of  the  most  fraudulent 
adulteration  and  the  underpaid  labour  of  the  children. 
Cotton  warp  became  quite  usual  in  goods  labelled  "  pure 
wool,"  and  "  shoddy  " — i.e.,  wool  combed  out  of  old  rags 
gathered  all  over  the  Continent  and  formerly  used  only 
for  blankets  fabricated  for  the  Indians  in  America — 
became  of  general  use.  In  these  kinds  of  goods  the 
factories  excelled.  And  yet  there  are  branches  of  the 
woollen  trade  where  hand-work  is  still  the  rule,  especi- 
ally in  the  fancy  goods  which  continually  require  new 
adaptations  for  temporary  demands.  Thus,  not  farther 
than  in  1881  the  hand-looms  of  Leeds  were  pretty  well 
occupied  with  the  fabrication  of  woollen  imitations  of 
sealskins. 

The  variety  of  domestic  industries  carried  on  in  the 
Lake  District  is  much  greater  than  might  be  expected, 
but  they  still  wait  for  careful  explorers.  I  will  only 
mention  the  hoop-makers,  the  basket  trade,  the  charcoal- 
burners,  the  bobbin-makers,  the  small  iron  furnaces 
working  with  charcoal  at  Backbarrow,  and  so  on.*  As 
a  whole,  we  do  not  well  know  the  petty  trades  of  this 
country,  and  therefore  we  sometimes  come  across  quite 
unexpected  facts.  Few  continental  writers  on  industrial 
topics  would  guess,  indeed,  that  nails  are  still  made  by 
hand  by  thousands  of  men,  women,  and  children  in  the 
Black  Country  of  South  Staffordshire,  as  also  in  Derby- 
shire,! or  that  the  best  needles  are  made  by  hand  at 
Redditch.  Chains  are  also  made  by  hand  at  Dudley 
and  Cradley,  and  although  the  press  is  periodically  moved 
to  speak  of  the  wretched  condition  of  the  chain-makers, 
men  and  women,  the  trade  still  maintains  itself;  while 
nearly  7000  men  are  busy  in  their  small  workshops  in 

*  E.  Roscoe's  notes  in  the  English  Illustrated  Magazivf,  May,  1884. 
t  Sevan's  Guide  to  English  Industries^ 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND  INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       1 37 

making  locks,  even  of  the  plainest  description,  at  Wal- 
sall, Wolverhampton,  and  Willenhall.  The  various 
ironmongeries  connected  with  horse-clothing — bits, 
spurs,  bridles,  and  so  on — are  also  largely  made  by  hand 
at  Walsall. 

The  Birmingham  gun  and  rifle  trades,  which  also 
belong  to  the  same  domain  of  small  industries,  are  well 
known.  As  to  the  various  branches  of  dress,  there  are 
still  important  divisions  of  the  United  Kingdom  where 
a  variety  of  domestic  trades  connected  with  dress  is 
carried  on  on  a  large  scale.  I  need  only  mention  the 
cottage  industries  of  Ireland,  as  also  some  of  them  which 
have  survived  in  the  shires  of  Buckingham,  Oxford, 
and  Bedford ;  hosiery  is  a  common  occupation  in  the 
villages  of  the  counties  of  Nottingham  and  Derby ;  and 
several  great  London  firms  send  out  cloth  to  be  made 
into  dress  in  the  villages  of  Sussex  and  Hampshire. 
Woollen  hosiery  is  at  home  in  the  villages  of  Leicester, 
and  especially  in  Scotland ;  straw-plaiting  and  hat- 
making  in  many  parts  of  the  country ;  while  at 
Northampton,  Leicester,  Ipswich,  and  Stafford  shoe- 
making  was,  till  quite  lately,  a  widely  spread  domestic 
occupation,  or  was  carried  on  in  small  workshops ;  even 
at  Norwich  it  remains  a  petty  trade  to  some  extent, 
notwithstanding  the  competition  of  the  factories.  It 
must  also  be  said  that  the  recent  appearance  of  large 
boot  and  shoe  factories  has  considerably  increased  the 
numbers  of  girls  and  women  who  sew  the  "  uppers," 
either  in  their  own  houses  or  in  sweaters'  workshops. 

The  petty  trades  are  thus  an  important  factor  of  indus- 
trial life  even  in  Great  Britain,  although  many  of  them 
have  gathered  into  the  towns.  But  if  we  find  in  this 
country  so  many  fewer  rural  industries  than  on  the 
Continent,  we  must  not  imagine  that  their  disappearance 
is  due  only  to  a  keener  competition  of  the  factories. 
The  chief  cause  was  the  compulsory  exodus  from  the 
villages. 


138  FIELDS,  FACTORIES  AND  WORKSHOPS. 

As  every  one  knows  from  Thorold  Rogers  work, 
or,  at  least,  from  Toynbee's  lectures,  the  growth  of 
the  factory  system  in  England  was  intimately  con- 
nected with  that  enforced  exodus.  Whole  industries, 
which  prospered  in  the  country,  were  killed  downright 
by  the  forced  clearing  of  estates*  The  workshops, 
much  more  even  than  the  factories,  multiply  wherever 
they  find  cheap  labour;  and  the  specific  feature  of  this 
country  is,  that  the  cheapest  labour — that  is,  the  greatest 
number  of  destitute  people — is  to  be  found  in  the  great 
cities.  The  agitation  raised  (with  no  result)  in  connec- 
tion with  the  "  Dwellings  of  the  Poor,"  the  "  Unem- 
ployed," and  the  "  Sweating  System,"  has  fully  disclosed 
that  characteristic  feature  of  the  economic  life  of  Eng- 
land and  Scotland  ;  and  the  painstaking  researches  made 
by  Mr.  Charles  Booth  have  shown  that  one-quarter  of 
the  population  of  London — that  is,  1,000,000  out  of 
3,800,000 — ^would  be  happy  if  the  heads  of  their  families 
could  have  regular  earnings  of  something  like  £l  a 
week  all  the  year  round.  Half  of  them  would  be 
satisfied  with  even  less  than  that.  Cheap  labour  is 
offered  in  such  quantities  at  Whitechapel  and  South- 
wark,  and  in  the  suburbs  of  all  the  great  cities  of  Great 
Britain,  that  the  petty  and  domestic  trades  which  are 
scattered  on  the  Continent  in  the  villages,  gather  in  this 
country  in  the  cities.  Exact  figures  as  to  the  small 
industries  are  wanting,  but  a  simple  walk  through  the 
suburbs  of  London  would  do  much  to  realise  the  variety 
of  petty  trades  which  swarm  in  the  metropolis,  and,  in 
fact,  in  all  chief  urban  agglomerations.  The  evidence 
given  before  the  "  Sweating  System  Committee "  has 
shown  how  far  the  furniture  and  ready-made  clothing 
palaces  and  the  "  Bonheur  des  Dames  "  bazaars  of  Lon- 
don are  often  mere  exhibitions  of  samples,  or  markets  for 
the  sale  of  the  produce  of  the  small  industries.     Thou- 

•  Thorold  Rogers,  The  Economic  Interpretation  of  History ;  Am. 
Toynbee,  Lectures  on  the  Industrial  Revolution  in  England. 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES   ANt)   tlNTDUSTRlAL  VILLAGES.       1 39 

sands  of  sweaters,  some  of  them  having  their  own 
workshops,  and  others  merely  distributing  work  to  sub- 
sweaters  who  distribute  it  again  amidst  the  destitute, 
supply  those  palaces  and  bazaars  with  goods  made  in 
the  slums  or  in  very  small  workshops.  The  commerce 
is  centralised  in  those  bazaars — not  the  industry.  The 
furniture  palaces  and  bazaars  are  thus  merely  playing 
the  part  which  the  feudal  castle  formerly  played  in 
agriculture :  they  centralise  the  profits — not  the  pro- 
duction. 

In  reality  the  extension  of  the  petty  trades,  side  by 
side  with  the  great  factories,  is  nothing  to  be  wondered 
at  It  is  an  economic  necessity.  The  absorption  of 
the  small  industries  by  bigger  concerns  is  a  fact,  but 
there  is  another  process  which  is  going  on  parallel  with 
the  former,  and  which  consists  in  the  continuous  creation 
of  new  industries,  usually  making  their  start  on  a  small 
scale.  Each  new  factory  calls  into  existence  a  number 
of  small  workshops,  partly  to  supply  its  own  needs  and 
partly  to  submit  its  produce  to  a  further  transformation. 
Thus,  to  quote  but  one  instance,  the  cotton  mills  have 
created  an  immense  demand  for  wooden  bobbins  and 
reels,  and  thousands  of  men  in  the  Lake  District  set 
to  manufacture  them — ^by  hand  first,  and  later  on  with 
the  aid  of  some  plain  machinery.  Only  quite  recently, 
after  years  had  been  spent  in  inventing  and  improving 
the  machinery,  the  bobbins  began  to  be  made  on  a  larger 
scale  in  factories.  And  even  yet,  as  the  machines  are 
very  costly,  a  great  quantity  of  bobbins  are  made  in 
small  workshops,  with  but  little  aid  from  machines, 
while  the  factories  themselves  are  relatively  small,  and 
seldom  employ  more  than  fifty  operatives — chiefly  chil- 
dren. As  to  the  reels  of  irregular  shape,  they  are  still 
made  by  hand,  or  partly  in  small  machines  continually 
invented  by  the  workers.  New  industries  thus  grow  up 
to  supplant  the  old  ones ;  each  of  them  passes  through 
a  preliminary  stage  on  a  small  scale  before  reaching 


I4O  MfiLDS,  FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

the  factory  stage ;  and  the  more  active  the  inventive 
genius  of  a  nation  is,  the  more  it  has  of  these  budding 
ndustries.  The  countless  small  bicycle  works  which 
have  lately  grown  up  in  this  country,  and  are  supplied 
with  ready-made  parts  of  the  bicycle  by  the  larger 
factories,  are  an  instance  in  point  As  also  the  domes- 
tic fabrication  of  boxes  for  matches,  boots,, hats,  confec- 
tionery, and  so  on. 

Besides,  the  factory  stimulates  the  birth  of  new  petty 
trades  by  creating  new  wants.  The  cheapness  of  cottons 
and  woollens,  of  paper  and  brass,  has  created  hundreds 
of  new  small  industries.  Our  households  are  full  of 
their  produce — mostly  things  of  quite  modern  invention. 
A.nd  while  some  of  them  already  are  turned  out  by  the 
million  in  the  factory,  all  have  passed  through  the  small 
workshop  stage  before  the  demand  was  great  enough 
to  require  the  factory  organisation.  The  more  we  may 
have  of  new  inventions,  the  more  shall  we  have  of  such 
small  industries ;  and  again,  the  more  we  have  of  them, 
the  more  shall  we  have  of  the  inventive  genius,  the 
want  of  which  is  so  justly  complained  of  in  this  country 
(by  W.  Armstrong,  amongst  many  others).  We  must 
not  wonder,  therefore,  if  we  see  so  many  small  trades  in 
this  country ;  but  we  must  regret  that  the  great  number 
have  abandoned  the  villages  in  consequence  of  the  bad 
conditions  of  land  tenure,  and  that  they  have  migrated 
in  such  numbers  to  the  cities,  to  the  detriment  of 
agriculture. 

Petty  Trades  in  France. 

Small  industries  are  met  with  in  France  in  a  very 
great  variety,  and  they  represent  a  most  important 
feature  of  national  economy.  It  is  estimated,  in  fact, 
that  while  one-half  of  the  population  of  France  live 
upon  agriculture,  and  one-fourth  upon  industry,  this 
fourth  part  is   equally  distributed   between   the   great 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       I4I 

industry  and  the  small  ones,  which  last  would  thus 
occupy  about  i,500,(X)0  workers  and  support  4,ooo,cx>d 
to  5,000,000  persons.  A  considerable  number  of 
peasants  who  resort  to  small  industries  without  aban- 
doning agriculture  would  have  to  be  added  to  the  just- 
mentioned  items,  and  the  additional  earnings  which  these 
peasants  find  in  industry  are  so  important  that  in  several 
parts  of  France  peasant  proprietorship  could  not  be 
maintained  without  the  aid  derived  from  the  rural 
industries. 

The  small  peasants  know  what  they  have  to  expect 
the  day  they  become  factory  hands  in  a  town ;  and 
so  long  as  they  have  not  been  dispossessed  by  the 
money-lender  of  their  lands  and  houses,  and  so  long  as 
the  village  rights  in  the  commimal  grazing  grounds  or 
woods  have  not  been  lost,  they  cHng  to  a  combination 
of  industry  with  agriculture.  Having,  in  most  cases, 
no  horses  to  plough  the  land,  they  resort  to  an  arrange- 
ment which  is  widely  spread,  if  not  universal,  among 
small  French  landholders,  even  in  purely  rural  districts 
(I  saw  it  even  in  Haute- Savoie).  One  of  the  peasants 
who  keeps  a  plough  and  a  team  of  horses,  tills  all  the 
fields  in  turn.  At  the  same  time,  owing  to  a  wide 
maintenance  of  the  communal  spirit,  which  I  have  de- 
scribed elsewhere,*  further  support  is  found  in  the 
communal  shepherd,  the  communal  wine-press,  and 
various  forms  of  "  aids "  amongst  the  peasants.  And 
wherever  the  village-community  spirit  is  maintained  the 
small  industries  persist,  while  no  effort  is  spared  to  bring 
the  small  plots  under  higher  culture. 

Market-gardening  and  fruit  culture  often  go  hand 
in  hand  with  small  industries.  And  wherever  well- 
being  is  found  on  a  relatively  improductive  soil,  it  is 
nearly  always  due  to  a  combination  of  the  two  sister 
arts. 

•  Nineteenth  Century,  March,  1896, 


142  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

The  most  wonderful  adaptations  of  the  small  indus- 
tries to  new  requirements,  and  substantial  technical 
progress  in  the  methods  of  production,  can  be  noted 
at  the  same  time.  It  may  even  be  said  of  France,  as 
it  has  been  said  of  Russia,  that  when  a  rural  industry 
dies  out,  the  cause  of  its  decay  is  found  much  less  in 
the  competition  of  rival  factories — in  hundreds  of 
localities  the  small  industry  undergoes  a  complete  modi- 
fication, or  it  changes  its  character  in  such  cases — than 
in  the  decay  of  the  population  as  agriculturists.  Con- 
tinually we  see  that  only  when  the  small  landholders 
have  been  ruined,  as  such,  by'  a  group  of  causes — the 
loss  of  communal  meadows,  or  abnormally  high  rents, 
or  the  havoc  made  in  some  locality  by  the  marchands 
de  biens  (swindlers  enticing  the  peasants  to  buy  land 
for  credit),  or  the  bankruptcy  of  some  shareholders* 
company  whose  shares  had  been  eagerly  taken  by  the 
peasants* — do  they  abandon  both  the  land  and  the 
rural  industry  and  emigrate  towards  the  towns.  Other- 
wise, a  new  industry  always  g^ows  up  when  the  com- 
petition of  the  factory  becomes  too  acute — a  wonderful, 
hardly  suspected  adaptability  being  displayed  by  the 
small  industries ;  or  else  the  rural  artisans  resort  to  some 
form  of  intensive  farming,  gardening,  etc.,  and  in  the 
meantime  some  other  industry  makes  its  appearance. 

It  is  evident  that  in  most  textile  industries  the  power- 
loom  supersedes  the  hand-loom,  and  the  factory  takes, 
or  has  taken  already,  the  place  of  the  cottage  industry. 
Cottons,  plain  linen,  and  machine-made  lace  are  now 
produced  at  such  a  low  cost  by  machinery,  that  hand- 
weaving  evidently  becomes  an  anachronism  for  the 
plainest  descriptions  of  such  goods.  Consequently, 
though  there  were  in  France,  in  the  year  1876,  328,300 
hand-looms  as  against  121,340  power-looms,  it  may 
safely  be  taken  that  the  number  of  the  former  has  been 

*  See  Baudrillart's  Les  Populations  agricoles  dc  la  France :  Normamiif, 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       I43 

considerably  reduced  within  the  last  twenty  years. 
However,  the  slowness  with  which  this  change  is  being 
accomplished  is  one  of  the  most  striking  features  of  the 
present  industrial  organisation  of  the  textile  trades  of 
France. 

The  causes  of  this  power  of  resistance  of  hand-loom- 
weaving  become  especially  apparent  when  one  consults 
such  works  as  Reybaud's  Le  Coton,  which  was  written 
in  1863,  more  than  thirty  years  ago — that  is,  at  a  time 
when  the  cottage  industries  were  still  fully  alive. 
Though  an  ardent  admirer  himself  of  the  great  industries, 
Reybaud  faithfully  noted  the  striking  superiority  of 
well-being  in  the  weavers'  cottages,  as  compared  with  the 
misery  of  the  factory  hands  in  the  cities.  Already,  then, 
the  cities  of  St  Quentin,  Lille,  Roubaix  and  Amiens 
were  great  centres  for  cotton-spinning  mills  and  cotton- 
weaving  factories.  But,  at  the  same  time,  all  sorts  of 
cottons  were  woven  in  hand-looms,  in  the  very  suburbs 
of  St  Quentin  and  in  a  hundred  villages  and  hamlets 
around  it,  to  be  sold  for  finishing  in  the  city.  And 
Reybaud  remarked  that  the  horrible  dwellings  in  town, 
and  the  general  condition  of  the  factory  hands,  stood 
in  a  wonderful  contrast  with  the  relative  welfare  of  the 
rural  weavers.  Nearly  every  one  of  these  last  had  his 
own  house  and  a  small  field  which  he  continued  to  cul- 
tivate.* 

Even  in  such  a  branch  as  the  fabrication  of  plain 
cotton  velvets,  in  which  the  competition  of  the  factories 
was  especially  keenly  felt,  home-weaving  was  widely 
spread,  in  1863  and  even  in  1878,  in  the  villages  round 
Amiens.  Although  the  earnings  of  the  rural  weavers 
were  small,  as  a  rule,  the  weavers  preferred  to  keep 
to  their  own  cottages,  to  their  own  crops  and  to  their  own 
cattle ;  and  only  repeated  commercial  crises,  as  well  as 
several  of  the  above-mentioned  causes^  hostile  to  th.^ 

•  Le  Cotottf  p.  170 


144  FIELDS,  FACTORIES  AND  WORKSHOPS. 

small  peasant,  compelled  most  of  them  to  give  up  the 
struggle,  and  to  seek  employment  in  the  factories,  while 
part  of  them  have,  by  this  time,  again  returned  to 
agriculture  or  taken  to  market-gardening. 

Another  important  centre  for  rural  industries  was 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  Rouen,  where  no  less  than 
110,000  persons  were  employed,  in  1863,  in  weaving 
cottons  for  the  finishing  factories  of  that  city.  In  the 
valley  of  the  Andelle,  in  the  department  of  Eure,  each 
village  was  at  that  time  an  industrial  bee-hive;  each 
streamlet  was  utilised  for  setting  into  work  a  small 
factory.  Reybaud  described  the  condition  of  the 
peasants  who  combined  agriculture  with  work  at  the 
rural  factory  as  most  satisfactory,  especially  in  com- 
parison with  the  condition  of  the  slum-dwellers  at 
Rouen,  and  he  even  mentioned  a  case  or  two  in  which 
the  village  factories  belonged  to  the  village  communities. 

Seventeen  years  later,  Baudrillart  *  depicted  the  same 
region  in  very  much  the  same  words ;  and  although  the 
rural  factories  had  had  to  yield  to  a  great  extent  before 
the  big  factories,  the  rural  industry  was  still  valued  as 
showing  a  yearly  production  of  85,000,000  francs 
(^2,400,000). 

At  the  present  time,  the  factories  must  have  made 
further  progress ;  but  we  still  see  from  the  excellent 
descriptions  of  M.  Ardouin  Dumazet,  whose  work  will 
have  in  the  future  almost  the  same  value  as  Arthur 
Young's  Travels,'^  that  a  considerable  portion  of  the 
rural  weavers  has  still  survived ;  while  at  the  same  time 
one  invariably  meets,  even  nowadays,  with  the  remark 
that  relative  well-being  is  prominent  in  the  villages 
in  which  weaving  is  connected  with  agriculture.  All 
taken,  we  must,  however,  say  that  in  northern  France, 
where  cottons  are  fabricated  on  a  large  scale  in  factory 

*  Le%  Populations  agricales  de  la  France :  Normandie. 
+  Voyage   en  France.      Paris,    1893-7    (Berget-LevreavJ,   publishers), 
10  vols. 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       145 

towns,  hand-weaving  in  the  villages  is  nearly  gone. 
But  things  have  a  different  aspect  when  we  take  other 
regions  of  France,  where  other  industries  prevail. 

Taking  the  region  situated  between  Rouen  in  the 
north-east,  Orleans  in  the  south-east,  Rennes  in  the 
north-west,  and  Nantes  in  the  south-west,  that  is,  the 
old  provinces  of  Normandy,  Perche  and  Maine,  and 
partly  Touraine  and  Anjou,  as  they  were  seen  by  Ar- 
douin  Dumazet  in  1895,  we  find  there  quite  a  variety 
of  domestic  and  petty  industries,  both  in  the  villages 
and  in  the  towns. 

At  Laval  (to  the  south-east  of  Rennes),  where  drills 
(coutils)  were  formerly  woven  out  of  flax  in  hand-looms, 
and  at  Alen^on,  formerly  a  great  centre  for  the  cottage- 
weaving  of  linen,  as  well  as  for  hand-made  lace,  Ardouin 
Dumazet  foimd  both  the  house  and  the  factory  linen 
industry  in  a  lingering  state.  Cotton  takes  the  lead. 
Drills  are  now  made  out  of  cotton  in  the  factories,  and 
the  demand  for  flax  goods  is  very  small.  Both  domestic 
and  factory  weaving  of  flax  goods  are  accordingly  in  a 
poor  condition.  The  cottagers  abandon  that  branch  of 
weaving,  and  the  large  factories  which  had  been  erected 
at  Alenfon,  with  the  intention  of  creating  a  flax  and 
hemp-cloth  industry,  had  to  be  closed  Only  one  fac- 
tory, occupying  250  hands,  remains ;  while  nearly 
23,000  weavers  who  found  occupation  at  Mans,  Fresnay 
and  Alenqon  in  hemp  cloths  and  fine  linen  had  to 
abandon  that  industry.  Those  who  worked  in  factories 
have  emigrated  to  other  towns,  while  those  who  had  not 
broken  with  agriculture  reverted  to  it  In  this  struggle  of 
cotton  versus  flax  and  hemp,  the  former  was  victorious. 

As  to  lace,  it  is  made  in  such  quzmtities  by  ma- 
chinery at  Calais,  Caudry,  St.  Quentin  and  Tarare  that 
only  high-class  artistic  lace-making  continues  on  a  smaU 
scale  at  Alengon  itself,  but  it  still  remains  a  by-occupation 
in  the  surrounding  country.  Besides,  at  Flers,  and  at 
Ferte  Mace  (a  small  town  to  the  south  of  the  former), 

10 


146  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

hand- weaving  is  still  carried  on  in  about  5400  hand- 
looms,  although  the  whole  trade,  in  factories  and  villages 
alike,  is  in  a  piteous  state  since  the  Spanish  markets, 
have  been  lost.  Spain  has  now  plenty  of  her  own  cotton 
mills.  Twelve  big  spinning  mills  at  Coud^  (where  4000 
tons  of  cotton  were  spun  in  1883)  were  abandoned  in 
1893,  and  the  workers  were  thrown  into  a  most  miserable 
condition.* 

On  Ifii  contrary,  in  an  industry  which  supplies  the 
home  market,  namely  in  the  fabrication  of  linen  hand- 
kerchiefs, which  itself  is  of  a  quite  recent  growth,  we 
see  that  cottage-weaving  is,  even  now,  in  full  prosperity. 
Cholet  (in  Maine-et-Loire,  south-west  of  Angers)  is  the 
centre  of  that  trade.  It  has  one  spinning  mill  and  one 
weaving  mill,  but  both  employ  considerably  fewer  hands 
than  domestic  weaving,  which  is  spread  in  no  less  than 
200  villages  of  the  surrounding  region.!  Neither  at 
Rouen  nor  in  the  industrial  cities  of  Northern  France 
are  so  many  linen  handkerchiefs  fabricated  as  in  this 
region  in  hand-looms,  we  are  told  by  Ardouin  Dumazet. 

Within  the  curve  made  by  the  Loire  as  it  flows  past 
Orleans  we  find  another  prosperous  centre  of  domestic 
industries  connected  with  cottons.  "  From  Romorantin 
[in  Loire-et-Cher,  south  of  Orleans]  to  Argenton  and 
Le  Blanc,"  the  same  writer  says,  "  we  have  one  immense 
workshop  where  handkerchiefs  are  embroidered,  and 
shirts,  cuffs,  collars  and  all  sorts  of  ladies'  linen  are  sewn 
or  embroidered.  There  is  not  one  house,  even  in  the 
tiniest  hamlets,  where  the  women  would  not  be  occupied 
in  that  trade  .  .  .  and  if  this  work  is  a  mere  passe- 
temps  in  vine-growing  regions,  here  it  has  become  the 
chief  resource  of  the  population."  +  Even  at  Romo- 
rantin itself,  where  400  women  and  girls  are  employed  in 
one  factory,  there  are  more  than  1000  women  who  sew 

*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  ii.,  p.  167. 

f  In  Maine-et-Loire,  la  Vendue,  Loire  Inf^rieure,  and  Deux-Sevres. 

J  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  i.,  p.  117  et  seq. 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES        I47 

linen  in  their  houses.  The  same  must  be  said  of  a  group 
of  industrial  villages,  peopled  with  clothiers  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  another  Normandy  city,  Elboeuf.  When 
Baudrillart  visited  them  in  1878-80,  he  was  struck  with 
the  undoubted  advantages  offered  by  a  combination 
of  agriculture  with  industry.  Clean  houses,  clean  dresses, 
and  a  general  stamp  of  well-being  were  characteristic  of 
these  villages. 

Happily  enough,  weaving  is  not  the  only  small  in- 
dustry of  both  this  region  and  Brittany.  On  the  con- 
trary, scores  of  other  small  industries  enliven  the 
villages  and  burgs.  At  Foug^res  (in  Ille-et-Vilaine,  to 
the  north-east  of  Reims)  one  sees  how  the  factory  has 
contributed  to  the  development  of  various  small  and 
domestic  trades.  In  1830  this  town  was  a  great  centre 
for  the  domestic  fabrication  of  the  so-called  chaussons 
dt  tresse.  The  competition  of  the  prisons  killed,  how- 
ever, this  primitive  industry ;  but  it  was  soon  substituted 
by  the  fabrication  of  soft  socks  in  felt  {chaussons  de 
feutre).  This  last  industry  also  went  down,  and  then  the 
fabrication  of  boots  and  shoes  was  introduced,  this  last 
giving  origin,  in  its  turn,  to  the  boot  and  shoe  factories, 
of  which  there  are  now  thirty-three  at  Foug^res,  em- 
ploying 8000  workers  (yearly  production  about  5,cxxD,ooo 
pairs).  But  at  the  same  time  domestic  industries  took  a 
new  development  Thousands  of  women  are  employed 
now  in  their  houses  in  sewing  the  "  uppers "  and  in 
embroidering  fancy  shoes.  Moreover,  quite  a  number 
of  smaller  workshops  grew  up  in  the  neighbourhood, 
for  the  fabrication  of  cardboard  boxes,  wooden  heels, 
and  so  on,  as  well  as  a  number  of  tanneries,  big  and 
small  And  M.  Ardouin  Dumazet's  remark  is,  that  one 
is  struck  to  find  owing  to  these  industries  an  un- 
doubtedly higher  level  of  well-being  in  the  villages— 
quite  unforeseen  in  the  centre  of  this  purely  agricultural 
region.* 

*  Vol.  v.,  D.  270- 


148  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

In  Brittany,  in  the  neighbourhcX)d  of  Quimperl^,  a 
great  number  of  small  workshops  for  the  fabrication  of 
the  felt  hats  which  are  worn  by  the  peasants  is  scattered 
in  the  villages ;  and  rapidly  improving  agriculture  goes 
hand  in  hand  with  that  trade.  Well-being  is  a  dis- 
tinctive feature  of  these  villages  *  At  Hennebout  (on 
the  southern  coast  of  Brittany)  1400  workers  are  em- 
ployed in  an  immense  factory  in  the  fabrication  of  tins 
for  preserves,  and  every  year  twenty-two  to  twenty- 
three  tons  of  iron  are  transformed  into  steel,  and  next 
into  tins,  which  are  sent  to  Paris,  Bordeaux,  Nantes,  and 
so  on.  But  the  factory  has  created  "  quite  a  world  of 
tiny  workshops "  in  this  purely  agricultural  region : 
small  tin- ware  workshops,  tanneries,  potteries,  and  so 
on,  while  the  slags  are  transformed  in  small  workshops 
into  manure.  Agriculture  and  industry  go  here  hand 
in  hand,  the  importance  of  not  severing  the  union  being 
perhaps  best  seen  at  Loud^ac,  a  small  town  in  the  midst 
of  Brittany  (department  of  C6tes-du-Nord).  Formerly 
the  villages  in  this  neighbourhood  were  industrial,  all 
hamlets  being  peopled  with  weavers  who  fabricated  the 
well-known  Brittany  linen.  Now,  this  industry  having 
very  much  gone  down,  the  weavers  have  simply  returned 
to  the  soil.  Out  of  an  industrial  town,  Loud^ac  has 
become  an  agricultural  market  town ;  t  and,  what  is 
most  interesting,  these  populations  conquer  new  lands 
for  agriculture  and  turn  the  formerly  quite  unproductive 
landes  into  rich  corn  fields  ;^  while  on  the  northern  coast 
of  Brittany,  around  Dol,  on  land  which  began  to  be 
conquered  from  the  sea  in  the  twelfth  century,  market- 
gardening  is  now  carried  on  to  a  very  great  extent  for 
export  to  England.  Altogether,  it  is  striking  to  observe, 
on  perusing  M.  Ardouin  Dumzizet's  little  volumes,  how 
domestic  industries  go  hand  in  hand  with  all  sorts  of  small 
industries    in    agriculture — gaxdening,    poultry-farming, 

*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  v.,  p.  215. 
t  Ihid.,  vol.  v.,  pp.  259-266 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       I4Q 

fabrication  of  fruit  preserves,  and  so  on,  and  how  all  sorts 
of  associations  for  sale  and  export  are  easily  introduced. 
Mans  is,  as  known,  a  great  centre  for  the  export  of 
geese  and  all  sorts  of  poultry  to  England. 

Part  of  Normandy  (namely,  the  departments  of  Eure 
and  Orne)  is  dotted  with  small  workshops  where  all 
sorts  of  small  brass  goods  and  hardware  are  still  fabri- 
cated in  the  villages.  Of  course,  the  domestic  fabrication 
of  pins  is  nearly  gone,  and  as  for  needles,  polishing 
only,  in  a  very  primitive  form,  has  been  maintained 
in  the '  villages.  But  all  sorts  of  small  hardware, 
including  nails,  lockets,  etc.,  in  great  variety,  are  fabri- 
cated in  the  villages,  especially  round  Laigle.  Stays  are 
also  sewn  in  small  workshops  in  many  villages,  notwith- 
standing the  competition  of  prison  work* 

Tinchebrai  (to  the  west  of  Flers)  is  a  real  centre  for 
a  great  variety  of  smaller  goods  in  iron,  mother-of-pearl 
and  horn.  All  sorts  of  hardware  and  locks  are  fabri- 
cated by  the  peasants  during  the  time  they  can  spare 
from  agriculture,  and  real  works  of  art,  some  of  which 
were  much  admired  at  the  exhibition  of  1889,  are  pro- 
duced by  these  humble  peasant  sculptors  in  horn, 
mother-of-pearl  and  iron.  Farther  south,  the  polishing 
of  marble  goods  is  carried  on  in  numbers  of  small  work- 
shops scattered  round  Solesmes  and  grouped  round  one 
central  establishment  where  marble  pieces  are  roughly 
shaped  with  the  aid  of  steam,  to  be  finished  in  the  small 
village  workshops.  At  Sabl^  the  workers  in  that  branch, 
who  all  own  their  houses  and  gardens,  enjoy  a  real  well- 
being  especially  noticed  by  our  traveller.! 

In  the  woody  regions  of  the  Perche  and  the  Maine 
we  find  all  sorts  of  wooden  industries  which  evidently 
could  only  be  maintained  owing  to  the  communal  pos- 
session of  the  woods.     Near  the  forest  of  Perseigne  there 

*  I  gave,  a  few  years  ago,  some  information  about  French  prison  work 
in  a  book,  In  Russian  and  French  Prisons,  London,  1888. 
f  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  ii.,  p.  51. 


I50  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

is  a  small  burg,  Fresnaye,  which  is  entirely  peopled  with 
workers  in  wood. 

"  There  is  not  one  house,"  Ardouin  Dumazet  writes,  "  in  which 
wooden  goods  would  not  be  fabricated.  Some  years  ago  there  was  little 
variety  in  their  produce ;  spoons,  salt-boxes,  shepherds'  boxes,  scales, 
various  wooden  pieces  for  weavers,  flutes  and  hautboys,  spindles,  wooden 
measures,  funnels,  and  wooden  bowls  were  only  made.  But  Paris  wanted 
to  have  a  thousand  things  in  which  wood  was  combined  with  iron : 
mouse-traps,  cloak-pegs,  spoons  for  jam,  brooms.  .  .  .  And  now  every 
house  has  a  workshop  containing  either  a  turning-lathe,  or  some  machine- 
tools  for  chopping  wood,  for  making  lattice-work,  and  so  on.  .  .  .  Quite 
a  new  industry  was  born,  and  the  most  coquettish  things  are  now 
fabricated.  Owing  to  this  industry  the  population  is  happy.  The  earn- 
ings are  not  high,  but  each  worker  owns  his  house  and  garden,  and 
occasionally  a  bit  of  field."  * 

At  Neufchcttel  wooden  shoes  are  made,  and  the  hamlet, 
we  are  told,  has  a  most  smiling  aspect.  To  every  house 
a  garden  is  attached,  and  none  of  the  misery  of  big  cities 
is  to  be  seen.  At  Jupilles  and  in  the  surrounding  country 
other  varieties  of  wooden  goods  are  produced:  tapes, 
boxes  of  different  kinds,  together  with  wooden  shoes ; 
while  at  the  forest  of  Vibraye  two  workshops  have  been 
erected  for  turning  out  umbrella  handles  by  the  million 
for  all  France.  One  of  these  workshops  having  been 
founded  by  a  worker  sculptor,  he  has  invented  and  intro- 
duced in  his  workshop  the  most  ingenious  machine-tools. 
About  150  men  work  at  this  factory;  but  it  is  evident 
that  half  a  dozen  smaller  workshops,  scattered  in  the 
villages,  would  have  answered  equally  well 

Going  now  over  to  a  quite  different  region — ^the 
Ni^vre,  in  the  centre  of  France,  and  Haute  Ivlarne,  in 
the  east — ^we  find  that  both  regions  are  great  centres 
for  a  variety  of  small  industries,  some  of  which  are 
maintained  by  associations  of  workers,  while  others  have 
grown  up  in  the  shadow  of  factories.  The  small  iron 
workshops  which  formerly  covered  the  country  have  not 
disappeared :    they  have   undergone  a  transformation ; 

•V9H.,  pp.  305,  306, 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES  AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       151 

and  now  the  country  is  covered  with  small  workshops 
where  agricultural  machinery,  chemical  produce,  and 
pottery  are  fabricated ;  "  one  ought  to  go  as  far  as 
Gu^rigny  and  Fourchambault  to  find  the  great  in- 
dustry ;  "  *  while  a  number  of  small  workshops  for  the 
fabrication  of  a  variety  of  hardware  flourish  by  the  side 
of,  and  owing  to  the  proximity  of,  the  industrial  centres. 
Pottery  makes  the  fortune  of  the  valley  of  the  Loire 
about  Nevers.  High-class  art  pottery  is  made  in  this 
town,  while  in  the  villages  plain  pottery  is  fabricated 
and  exported  by  merchants  who  go  about  with  their 
boats,  selling  it  At  Gien  a  large  factory  of  china  buttons 
(made  out  of  felspar-powder  cemented  with  milk)  has 
lately  been  established,  and  employs  1 500  workmen,  who 
produce  from  3500  to  4500  lb.  of  buttons  every  day. 
And,  as  is  often  the  case,  part  of  the  work  is  done  in 
the  villages.  For  many  miles  on  both  banks  of  the 
Loire,  in  all  villages,  old  people,  women  and  children  sew 
the  buttons  to  the  cardboard  pieces.  Of  course,  that 
sort  of  work  is  wretchedly  paid ;  but  it  is  resorted  to 
only  because  there  is  no  other  sort  of  industry  in  the 
neighbourhood  to  which  the  peasants  could  give  their 
leisure  time. 

In  the  same  region  of  the  Haute  Marne,  especially 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  Nogent,  we  find  cutlery  as  a 
by-occupation  to  agriculture.  Landed  property  is  very 
much  subdivided  in  that  part  of  France,  and  great 
numbers  of  peasants  own  but  from  two  to  three  acres 
per  family,  or  even  less.  Consequently,  in  thirty  villages 
round  Nogent,  about  5000  men  are  engaged  in  cutlery, 
chiefly  of  the  highest  sort  (artistic  knives  are  occasion- 
ally sold  at  as  much  as  £'20  a  piece),  while  the  lower  sorts 
are  fabricated  in  the  neighbourhoods  of  Thiers,  in  Puy- 
de-D6me  (Auvergne).  The  Nogent  industry  has  de- 
veloped spontaneously  without  any  aid  from  without, 

*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  i.,  p.  52. 


152  FIELDS,    FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

and  in  its  technical  part  it  shows  considerable  progress ;  * 
while  at  Thiers,  where  the  cheapest  sorts  of  cutlery  are 
made,  the  division  of  labour,  the  cheapness  of  rent  for 
small  workshops  supplied  with  motive  power  from  the 
Durolle  river,  or  from  small  gas  motors,  the  aid  of  a 
great  variety  of  specially  invented  machine-tools,  and  the 
existing  combination  of  machine-work  with  hand-work 
have  resulted  in  such  a  perfection  of  the  technical  part 
of  the  trade  that  it  is  considered  doubtful  whether  the 
factory  system  could  further  economise  labour.!  For 
twelve  miles  round  Thiers,  in  each  direction,  all  the 
streamlets  are  dotted  with  small  workshops,  in  which 
peasants,  who  continue  to  cultivate  their  fields,  are  at 
work. 

Basket-making  is  again  an  important  cottage  industry 
in  several  parts  of  France,  namely  in  Aisne  and  in 
Haute  Marne.  In  this  last  department,  at  Villaines, 
every  one  is  a  basket-maker,  "  and  all  the  basket-makers 
belong  to  a  co-operative  society,"  Ardouin  Dumazet  re- 
marks. +  "  There  are  no  employers ;  all  the  produce  is 
brought  once  a  fortnight  to  the  co-operative  stores  and 
there  it  is  sold  for  the  association.  About  150  families 
belong  to  it,  and  each  owns  a  house  and  some  vineyards." 
At  Fays-Billot,  also  in  Haute  Marne,  1500  basket- 
makers  also  belong  to  an  association  ;  while  at  Thi6- 
rache,  where  several  thousand  men  are  engaged  in  the 
same  trade,  no  association  has  been  formed,  the  earnings 
being  in  consequence  extremely  low. 

Another  very  important  centre  of  petty  trades  is 
the  French  Jura,  or  the  French  part  of  the  Jura  Moun- 
tains, where  the  watch  trade  has  attained,  as  known, 
a  high  development.      When   I   visited   these   villages 

*  Prof.  Issaieff  in  the  Russian  Memoirs  of  the  Petty  Trades  Commission 
{Trudy  Kustarnoi  Kommissii),  vol.  v. 

f  Knives  are  sold  at  from  6s.  ^d.  to  8s.  per  gross,  and  razors  at  3s.  3d. 
per  gross — '*  for  export  ". 

\  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol,  i.,  p.  213  et  se^ 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL   VILLAGES.        1 53 

between  the  Swiss  frontier  and  Besangon  in  the  year 
1878,  I  was  struck  by  the  high  degree  of  relative  well- 
being  which  I  could  observe,  even  though  I  was  perfectly 
well  acquainted  with  the  Swiss  villages  in  the  Val  de 
Saint  Imier.  It  is  very  probable  that  the  machine-made 
watches  have  brought  about  a  crisis  in  French  watch- 
making as  they  have  in  Switzerland.  But  it  is  known 
that  part,  at  least,  of  the  Swiss  watch-makers  have  strenu- 
ously fought  against  the  necessity  of  being  enrolled  in 
the  factories,  and  that  while  watch  factories  grew  up 
at  Geneva  and  elsewhere,  considerable  numbers  of  the 
watch-maJkers  have  taken  to  divers  other  trades  which 
continue  to  be  carried  on  as  domestic  or  small  industries. 
I  must  only  axid  that  in  the  French  Jura  great  numbers 
of  watch-makers  were  at  the  same  time  owners  of  their 
houses  cind  gardens,  very  often  of  bits  of  fields,  and 
especially  of  communal  meadows,  and  that  the  communal 
fruitier es,  or  creameries  for  the  common  sale  of  butter 
and  cheese,  are  widely  spread  in  that  part  of  France. 

So  far  as  I  could  ascertain,  the  development  of  the 
machine-made  watch  industry  has  not  destroyed  the 
small  industries  of  the  Jura  hills.  The  watch-makers 
have  taken  to  new  branches,  and,  as  in  Switzerland,  they 
have  created  various  new  industries.  From  Ardouin 
Dumazet's  travels  we  can,  at  any  rate,  borrow  an  insight 
into  the  present  state  of  the  southern  part  of  this  region. 
In  the  neighbourhoods  of  Nantua  and  Cluse  silks  are 
woven  in  nearly  all  villages,  the  peasants  giving  to 
weaving  their  spare  time  from  agriculture,  while  quite  a 
number  of  small  workshops  (mostly  less  than  twenty 
looms,  one  of  100  looms)  are  scattered  in  the  little 
villages,  on  the  streamlets  running  from  the  hills. 
Scores  of  small  saw-mills  have  also  been  built  along  the 
streamlet  Merloz,  for  the  fabrication  of  all  sorts  of  little 
pretty  things  in  wood.  At  Oyonnax,  a  small  town  on 
the  Ain,  we  have  a  big  centre  for  the  fabrication  of 
combs,  an  industry  more  than  200  years  old,  which  took 


154  FIELDS,    FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

a  new  development  since  the  last  war  through  the  inven- 
tion of  celluloid  No  less  than  lOO  or  120  "masters" 
employ  from  two  to  fifteen  workers  each,  while  over 
1200  persons  work  in  their  houses,  making  combs  out  of 
Irish  horn  and  French  celluloid.  Wheel-power  was 
formerly  rented  in  small  workshops,  but  electricity, 
generated  by  a  waterfall,  has  lately  been  introduced, 
and  is  now  distributed  in  the  houses  for  bringing  into 
motion  small  motors  of  from  one-quarter  to  twelve 
horse-power.  And  it  is  remarkable  to  notice  that  as 
soon  as  electricity  gave  the  possibility  to  return  to  do- 
mestic work  300  workers  left  at  once  the  small  work- 
shops and  took  to  work  in  their  houses.  Most  of  these 
workers  have  their  own  cottages  and  gardens,  and  they 
show  a  very  interesting  spirit  of  association.  They  have 
also  erected  four  workshops  for  making  cardboard  boxes, 
and  their  production  is  valued  at  2,ocx),ooo  fr.  every  year.* 
At  St.  Claude,  which  is  a  great  centre  for  briar  pipes 
(sold  in  large  quantities  in  London  with  English  trade- 
marks, and  therefore  eagerly  bought  by  those  Frenchmen 
who  visit  London,  as  a  souvenir  from  the  other  side  of 
the  Channel),  big  and  small  workshops,  both  supplied 
by  motive  force  from  the  Tacon  streamlet,  prosper  by  the 
side  of  each  other.  Over  4000  men  and  women  are 
employed  in  this  trade,  while  all  sorts  of  small  by-trades 
have  grown  by  its  side  (amber  and  horn  mouth-pieces, 
sheaths,  etc.).  Countless  small  workshops  are  busy 
besides,  on  the  banks  of  the  two  streams,  with  the  fabri- 
cation of  all  sorts  of  wooden  things  :  match-boxes,  beads, 
sheaths  for  spectacles,  small  things  in  horn,  and  so  on, 
to  say  nothing  of  a  large  factory  (200  workers)  where 
metric  measures  are  fabricated  for  the  whole  world 
At  the  same  time  thousands  of  persons  in  St.  Claude,  in 
the  neighbouring  villages  and  in  the  smallest  mountain 
hamlets,  are  busy  in  cutting  diamonds  (an  industry  only 

*Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  viii.,  p.  40. 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       1 55 

fifteen  years  old  in  this  region),  and  other  thousands  are 
busy  in  cutting  various  less  precious  stones.  All  this 
is  done  in  quite  small  workshops  supplied  by  water- 
power.  The  extraction  of  ice  from  some  lakes  and  the 
gathering  of  oak-bark  for  tanneries  complete  the  picture 
of  these  busy  villages,  where  industry  joins  hands  with 
agriculture,  and  modern  machines  and  appliances  are  so 
well  put  in  the  service  of  the  small  workshops. 

Finally,  omitting  a  mass  of  small  trades,  I  will  only 
name  the  hat-makers  of  the  Loire,  the  stationery  of  the 
Ardfeche,  the  fabrication  of  hardware  in  the  Doubs,  the 
glove-makers  of  the  Isere,  the  broom  and  brush-makers 
of  the  Oise  (valued  at  ;;6^8oo,ooo  per  annum),  and  the 
house  machine-knitting  in  the  neighbourhoods  of  Troyes. 
But  I  must  say  a  few  words  more  about  two  important 
centres  of  small  industries :  the  Lyons  region  and  Paris. 

At  the  present  time  the  industrial  region  of  which 
Lyons  is  the  centre  *  includes  the  departments  of  Rhone, 
Loire,  Dr6me,  Sa6ne-et-Loire,  Ain,  the  southern  part  of 
the  Jura  department,  and  the  western  part  of  Savoy, 
as  far  as  Annecy,  while  the  silkworm  is  reared  as  far  as 
the  Alps,  the  C^vennes  Mountains,  and  the  neighbour- 
hoods of  Mtcon.  It  contains,  besides  fertile  plains, 
large  hilly  tracts,  also  very  fertile  as  a  rule,  but  covered 
with  snow  during  part  of  the  winter,  and  the  rural  popu- 
lations are  therefore  bound  to  resort  to  some  industrial 
occupation  in  addition  to  agriculture ;  they  find  it  in 
silk-weaving  and  various  small  industries.  Altogether 
it  may  be  said  that  the  region  lyonnaise  is  characterised 
as  a  separate  centre  of  French  civilisation  and  art,  and 
that  a  remarkable  spirit  of  research,  discovery  and  in- 
vention has  developed  there  in  all  directions — scientific 
and  industrial 

The  Croix  Rousse  at  Lyons,  where  the  silk-weavers 

*  For  further  details  see  Appendix  O. 


156  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

{canuts)  have  their  chief  quarters,  is  the  centre  of  that 
industry,  and  in  1895  the  whole  of  that  hill,  thickly 
covered  with  houses,  five,  six,  eight  and  ten  storeys 
high,  resounded  with  the  noise  of  the  looms  which  were 
busily  going  in  every  apartment  of  that  big  agglomera- 
tion. Electricity  has  lately  been  brought  into  the  ser- 
vice of  this  domestic  industry,  supplying  motive  power 
to  the  looms. 

To  the  south  of  Lyons,  in  the  city  of  Vienne,  hand- 
weaving  is  disappearing.  "  Shoddy  "  is  now  the  lead- 
ing produce,  and  twenty-eight  concerns  only  remain 
out  of  the  120  fabriques  which  existed  thirty  years  ago. 
Old  woollen  rags,  rags  of  carpets,  and  all  the  dust  from 
the  carding  and  spinning  in  the  wool  and  cotton  factories 
of  Northern  France,  with  a  small  addition  of  cotton, 
are  transformed  here  into  cloth  which  flows  from  Vienne 
to  all  the  big  cities  of  France — 20,000  yards  of  "  shoddy  " 
every  day — to  supply  the  ready-made  clothing  factories. 
Hand-weaving  has  evidently  nothing  to  do  in  that  in- 
dustry, and  only  1300  hand-looms  are  now  at  work  out 
of  the  4000  which  were  in  motion  ten  years  ago.  Large 
factories,  employing  a  total  of  1800  workers,  have  taken 
the  place  of  these  hand-weavers,  while  "  shoddy "  has 
taken  the  place  of  cloth.  All  sorts  of  flannels,  felt  hats, 
tissues  of  horse-hair,  and  so  on,  are  fabricated  at  the 
same  time.  But  while  the  great  factory  thus  conquered 
the  city  of  Vienne,  its  suburbs  and  its  nearest  surround- 
ings became  the  centre  of  a  prosperous  gardening  and 
fruit  culture,  which  has  already  been  mentioned  in 
chapter  iv.  The  banks  of  the  Rh6ne,  between  Ampuis 
and  Condrieu,  are  one  of  the  wealthiest  parts  of  all 
France,  owing  to  the  shrubberies  and  nurseries,  market- 
gardening,  fruit-growing,  vine-growing  and  cheese-mak- 
ing out  of  goats'  milk.  House  industries  go  there  hand 
in  hand  with  an  intelligent  culture  of  the  soil ;  Condrieu, 
for  instance,  is  a  famous  centre  for  embroidery,  which  is 
made  partly  by  hand,  as  of  old,  and  partly  by  machinery. 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       157 

In  the  west  of  Lyons,  at  TArbresles,  factories  have 
grown  up  for  making  silks  and  velvets ;  but  a  large  part 
of  the  population  still  continue  to  weave  in  their  houses  ; 
while  farther  west,  Panissi^res  is  the  centre  of  quite  a 
number  of  villages  in  which  linen  and  silks  are  woven  as 
a  domestic  industry.  Not  all  these  workers  own  their 
houses,  but  those,  at  least,  who  own  or  rent  a  small  piece 
of  land  or  garden,  or  keep  a  couple  of  cows,  are  said  to 
be  well  off,  and  the  land,  as  a  rule,  is  said  to  be  admir- 
ably cultivated  by  these  weavers. 

The  chief  industrial  centre  of  this  part  of  the  Lyons 
region  is  certainly  Tarare.  Thirty  years  ago,  when  Rey- 
baud  wrote  his  excellent  work,  Le  Coton,  it  was  a  centre 
for  the  manufacture  of  muslins  and  it  occupied  in  this  in- 
dustry the  same  position  as  Leeds  formerly  occupied  in 
this  country  in  the  woollen  cloth  trade.  The  spinning  mills 
and  the  large  finishing  factories  were  at  Tarare,  while 
the  weaving  of  the  muslins  and  the  embroidery  of  the 
same  were  made  in  the  surrounding  villages,  especially 
in  the  hilly  tracts  of  the  Beaujolais  and  the  Forez. 
Each  peasant  house,  each  farm  and  metayerie  were  small 
workshops  at  that  time,  and  one  could  see,  Reybaud 
wrote,  the  lad  of  twenty  embroidering  fine  muslin  after 
he  had  finished  cleaning  the  farm  stables,  without  the 
work  suffering  in  its  delicacy  from  a  combination  of  two 
such  varied  pursuits.  On  the  contrary,  the  delicacy  of 
the  work  and  the  extreme  variety  of  patterns  were  a  dis- 
tinctive feature  of  the  Tarare  muslins  and  a  cause  of  their 
success.  All  testimonies  agreed  at  the  same  time  in  re- 
cognising that,  while  agriculture  found  support  in  the 
industry,  the  agricultural  population  enjoyed  a  relative 
well-being. 

By  this  time  the  industry  has  undergone  a  thorough 
transformation,  but  still  no  less  than  60,000  persons, 
representing  a  population  of  about  250,000  souls,  work 
for  Tarare  in  the  hilly  tracts,  weaving  all  sorts  of  muslins 
for  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  they  earn  every  year 


158  FIELDS,   FACT    RIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

;^48o,ooo  in  this  way.  Amplepuis,  notwithstanding  its 
own  factories  of  silks  and  its  wonderful  apricot  culture, 
remains  one  of  the  local  centres  for  such  muslins  ;  while 
close  by,  Thizy  is  a  centre  for  a  variety  of  linings,  flannels, 
"  Peruvian  serges,"  "  oxfords,"  and  other  mixed  woollen- 
and-cotton  stuffs  which  are  woven  in  the  mountains  by 
the  peasants.  No  less  than  3000  hand-looms  are  thus 
scattered  in  twenty-two  villages,  and  about  ;^6oo,ooo 
worth  of  various  stuffs  are  woven  every  year  by  the 
rural  weavers  in  this  neighbourhood  alone;  while 
I  5,000  power-looms  are  at  work  in  both  Thizy  and  the 
great  city  of  Roanne,  in  which  two  towns  all  varieties 
of  cottons  (linings,  flannelettes,  apron  cloth)  and  silk 
blankets  are  woven  in  factories  by  the  million  yards. 
At  Cours,  1600  workers  are  employed  in  making 
"  blankets,"  chiefly  of  the  lowest  sort  (even  such  as  are 
sold  at  2s.  and  even  lod.  a  piece,  for  export  to  Brazil) ; 
all  possible  and  imaginable  rags  and  sweepings  from 
all  sorts  of  textile  factories  (jute,  cotton,  flax,  hemp,  wool 
and  silk)  are  used  for  that  industry,  in  which  the  factory 
is,  of  course,  fully  victorious.  But  even  at  Roanne, 
where  the  fabrication  of  cottons  has  attained  a  great 
degree  of  perfection  and  9000  power-looms  are  at  work, 
producing  every  year  more  than  30,000,000  yards — 
even  at  Roanne  one  finds  with  astonishment  that  do- 
mestic industries  are  not  dead,  but  yield  every  year  the 
respectable  amount  of  more  than  10,000,000  yards  of 
stuffs.  At  the  same  time,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  that 
big  city  the  industry  of  fancy-knitting  has  taken  within 
the  last  thirty  years  a  sudden  development.  Only  2000 
women  were  employed  in  it  in  1864,  but  their  numbers 
are  now  estimated  at  20,000 ;  and,  without  abandoning 
their  rural  work,  they  find  time  to  knit,  with  the  aid  of 
small  knitting-machines,  all  sorts  of  fancy  articles  in 
wool,  the  annual  value  of  which  is  estimated  at 
^^360,000.* 

*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  viii.,  p.  266. 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL   VILLAGES.       1 59 

It  must  not  be  thought,  however,  that  textiles  and 
connected  trades  are  the  only  small  industries  in  this 
locality.  Scores  of  various  rural  industries  continue 
to  exist  besides,  and  in  nearly  all  of  them  the  methods 
of  production  are  continually  improved.  Thus,  when 
the  rural  making  of  plain  chairs  became  unprofitable, 
articles  of  luxury  and  stylish  chairs  began  to  be  fabri- 
cated in  the  villages,  and  similar  transformations  are 
found  everywhere. 

More  details  about  this  extremely  interesting  region 
will  be  found  in  the  Appendix,  but  one  remark  must  be 
made  in  this  place.  Notwithstanding  its  big  industries 
and  coal  mines  this  part  of  France  has  entirely  main- 
tained its  rural  aspect,  and  is  now  one  of  the  best  cul- 
tivated parts  of  the  country.  What  most  deserves 
admiration  is — not  so  much  the  development  of  the  great 
industries,  which,  after  all,  here  as  elsewhere,  are  to  a 
great  extent  international  in  their  origins — as  the  creative 
and  inventive  powers  and  capacities  of  adaptation  which 
appear  amongst  the  great  mass  of  these  industrious  popu- 
lations. At  every  step,  in  the  field,  in  the  garden,  in  the 
orchard,  in  the  dairy,  in  the  industrial  arts,  in  the  hun- 
dreds of  small  inventions  in  these  arts,  one  sees  the 
creative  genius  of  the  folk.  In  these  regions  one  best 
understands  why  France,  taking  the  mass  of  its  popula- 
tion, is  considered  the  richest  country  of  Europe.* 

The  chief  centre  for  petty  trades  in  France  is,  how- 
ever, Paris.  There  we  find,  by  the  side  of  the  large 
factories,  the  greatest  variety  of  petty  trades  for  the 
fabrication  of  goods  of  every  description,  both  for  the 
home  market  and  for  export.  The  petty  trades  at 
Paris  so  much  prevail  over  the  factories  that  the  average 
number  of  workmen  employed  in  the  98,000  factories  and 
workshops  of  Paris  is  less  than  six,  while  the  number  of 

*Some  further  details  about  the  Lyons  region  and  St.  Etienne  are 
given  in  Appendix  O. 


l6o  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND    WORKSHOPS. 

persons  employed  in  workshops  which  have  less  than 
five  operatives  is  almost  twice  as  big  as  the  number  of 
persons  employed  in  the  larger  establishments.*  In 
fact,  Paris  is  a  great  bee-hive  where  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  men  and  women  fabricate  in  small  workshops 
all  possible  varieties  of  goods  which  require  skill,  taste 
and  invention.  These  small  workshops,  in  which  artistic 
finish  and  rapidity  of  work  are  so  much  praised,  neces- 
sarily stimulate  the  mental  powers  of  the  producers ; 
and  we  may  safely  admit  that  if  the  Pciris  workmen  are 
generally  considered,  ctnd  really  are,  more  developed 
intellectually  than  the  workers  of  any  other  European 
capital,  this  is  due  to  a  great  extent  to  the  character 
of  the  work  they  are  engaged  in — a  work  which  implies 
artistic  taste,  skill,  and  especially  inventiveness,  always 
wide  awake  in  order  to  invent  new  patterns  of  goods 
and  steadily  to  increase  and  to  perfect  the  technical 
methods  of  production.  It  also  appears  very  probable 
that  if  we  find  a  highly  developed  working  population 
in  Vienna  and  Warsaw,  this  depends  again  to  a  very  great 
extent  upon  the  very  considerable  development  of  similar 
small  industries,  which  stimulate  invention  and  so  much 
contribute  to  develop  the  worker's  intelligence. 

The  Galerie  du  travail  at  the  Paris  exhibitions  is 
always  a  most  remarkable  sight.  One  can  appreciate 
in  it  both  the  variety  of  the  small  industries  which  are 
carried  on  in  French  towns  and  the  skill  and  inventing 
powers  of  the  workers.  And  the  question  necessarily 
arises :  Must  all  this  skill,  all  this  intelligence,  be  swept 
away  by  the  factory,  instead  of  becoming  a  new  fertile 
source  of  progress  under  a  better  organisation  of  pro- 
duction }  must  all  this  independence  and  inventiveness 
of  the  worker  disappear  before  the  factory  levelling.^ 

*In  1873,  out  of  a  total  population  of  1,851,800  inhabiting  Paris, 
816,040  (404,408  men  and  411,632  women)  were  living  on  industry,  and 
out  of  them  only  293,691  were  connected  with  the  factories  {grande 
Industrie),  while  522,349  were  living  on  the  petty  trades  {petite  industrie). 
.^Maxime  du  Camp.  Pa:rii  et  ses  Orsanen  vol.  vi. 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       l6l 

and,  if  it  must,  would  such  a  transformation  be  a  pro- 
gress, as  so  many  economists  who  have  only  studied 
figures  and  not  human  beings  are  ready  to  maintain  ? 

At  any  rate,  it  is  quite  certain  that  even  if  the  ab- 
sorption of  the  French  petty  trades  by  the  big  factories 
were  possible — ^which  seems  extremely  doubtful — the  ab- 
sorption would  not  be  accomplished  so  soon  as  that 
The  small  industry  of  Paris  fights  hard  for  its  mainten- 
ance, and  it  shows  its  vitality  by  the  numberless 
machine-tools  which  are  continually  invented  by  the 
workers  for  improving  and  cheapening  the  produce. 

The  numbers  of  motors  which  were  exhibited  at 
the  last  exhibitions  in  the  Galerie  du  travail  bear  a 
testimony  to  the  fact  that  a  cheap  motor,  for  the  small 
industry,  is  one  of  the  leading  problems  of  the  day. 
Motors  weighing  only  forty-five  lb.,  including  the  boiler, 
were  invented  to  answer  that  want  Small  two-horse- 
power engines,  now  fabricated  by  the  engineers  of  the 
Jura  (formerly  watch-makers)  in  their  small  workshops, 
are  another  attempt  to  solve  the  problem — to  say  nothing 
of  the  water,  gas  and  electrical  motors.  The  trans- 
mission of  steam-power  to  230  small  workshops  which 
was  made  by  the  Societe  des  Immeubles  industriels  was 
another  attempt  in  the  same  direction,  and  the  increasing 
efforts  of  the  French  engineers  for  finding  out  the  best 
means  of  transmitting  and  subdividing  power  by  means 
of  compressed  air,  "  tele-dynamic  cables,"  and  electricity 
are  indicative  of  the  endeavours  of  the  small  industry  to 
retain  its  ground  in  the  face  of  the  competition  of  the 
factories.     (See  Appendix  P.) 


II 


CHAPTER   VII. 

SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND  INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES 
(continued). 

Petty  trades  in  Germany  :  Discussions  upon  the  subject  and  conclusions 
arrived  at — Petty  trades  in  Russia — Conclusions. 

PeUj/  Trades  in  Germany. 

The  various  industries  which  still  have  retained  in 
Germany  the  characters  of  petty  and  domestic  trades 
have  been  the  subject  of  many  exhaustive  explorations, 
especially  by  A.  M.  Thun,  and  Prof.  Issaieff,  on  behalf 
of  the  Russian  Petty  Trades  Commission,  Emanuel  Hans 
Sax,  Paul  Voigt,  and  very  many  others.  By  this  time 
the  subject  has  a  bulky  literature,  and  such  impressive 
and  suggestive  pictures  have  been  drawn  from  life  for 
different  regions  and  trades  that  I  felt  tempted  to  sum 
up  these  life-true  descriptions.  However,  as  in  such  a 
summary  I  should  have  to  repeat  much  of  what  has 
already  been  said  and  illustrated  in  the  preceding  chap- 
ter, it  will  probably  more  interest  the  general  reader  to 
know  something  about  the  conclusions  which  can  be 
drawn  from  the  works  of  the  German  investigators.* 

Unhappily,  the  discussion  upon  this  important  sub- 
ject has  often  taken  in  Germany  a  passionate  and  even 
a  personally  aggressive  character. f     On  the  one  hand 

*  The  remarks  of  Prof.  Issaieff — a  thorough  investigator  of  petty  trades 
in  Russia,  Germany  and  France — will  be  for  me  a  very  valualjle  guide  in 
the  following.  See  Works  of  the  Commission  for  the  Study  of  Petty 
Trades  in  Russia  (Russian),  St.  Petersburg,  1879-87,  vol.  i. 

t  See  K.  Buecher's  Preface  to  the  Untersuchungen  uber  die  Lage  des 
Handwerks  in  Deutschland,  vol.  iv. 

(162) 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       1 63 

the  ultra-conservative  elements  of  German  politics  tried, 
and  succeeded  to  some  extent,  in  making  of  the  petty 
trades  and  the  domestic  industries  an  arm  for  securing 
a  return  to  the  "  olden  good  times  ".  They  even  passed 
a  law  intended  to  prepare  a  reintroduction  of  the  old- 
fashioned,  closed  and  patriarchal  corporations  which 
could  be  placed  under  the  close  supervision  and  tutorship 
of  the  State,  and  they  saw  in  such  a  law  a  weapon 
against  social  democracy.  On  the  other  hand,  the  social 
democrats,  justly  opposed  to  such  measures,  but  them- 
selves inclined,  in  their  turn,  to  take  too  abstract  a 
view  of  economical  questions,  bitterly  attack  all  those 
who  do  not  merely  repeat  the  stereotyped  phrases  to  the 
effect  that  "  the  petty  trades  are  in  decay,"  and  "  the 
sooner  they  disappear  the  better,"  as  they  will  give  room 
to  capitalist  centralisation,  which,  according  to  the  social 
democratic  creed,  "  will  soon  achieve  its  own  ruin  ".* 
In  this  dislike  of  the  small  industries  they  are,  of  course, 
at  one  with  the  economists  of  the  orthodox  school,  whom 
'they  combat  on  nearly  all  other  points. 

Under  such  conditions,  the  polemics  about  the  petty 

*  The  foundation  for  this  creed  is  contained  in  one  of  the  concluding 
chapters  of  Marx's  Kapital  (the  last  but  one),  in  which  the  author  spoke 
of  the  concentration  of  capital  and  saw  in  it  the  "  fatality  of  a  natural 
law".  In  the  "forties,"  this  idea  was  shared  by  nearly  all  socialists, 
and  continually  recurred  in  their  writings.  But  Marx  was  too  much  of 
a  thinker  that  he  should  not  have  taken  notice  of  the  subsequent 
developments  of  industrial  life,  which  were  not  foreseen  in  1848 ;  if  he 
had  lived  now  he  surely  would  not  have  shut  his  eyes  to  the  formidable 
growth  of  the  numbers  of  small  capitalists  and  to  the  middle-class 
fortunes  which  are  made  in  a  thousand  ways  under  the  shadow  of  the 
modern  '♦  millionaires ".  Very  likely  he  would  have  noticed  also  the 
extreme  slowness  with  which  the  wrecking  of  small  industries  goes  on 
— a  slowness  which  could  not  be  predicted  fifty  or  forty  years  ago, 
because  no  one  could  foresee  at  that  time  the  facilities  which  have  been 
offered  since  for  transport,  the  growing  variety  of  demand,  nor  the  cheap 
means  which  are  now  in  use  for  the  supply  of  motive  power  in  small 
quantities.  Being  a  thinker,  he  would  have  studied  these  facts,  and  very 
probably  he  would  have  mitigated  the  absoluteness  of  his  earlier  formulae, 
as  in  fact  he  did  once  with  regard  to  the  village  community  in  Russia. 
It  would  be  most  desirable  that  his  followers  should  rely  less  upon 
abstract  formulae — easy  as  they  may  be  as  watchwords  in  political 
struggles — and  try  to  imitate  their  teacher  in  his  analysis  of  concrete 
economical  phenomena. 


1 64  .FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

trades  and  the  domestic  industries  are  evidently  doomed 
to  remain  most  unproductive.  However,  it  is  pleasant 
to  see  that  a  considerable  amount  of  most  conscientious 
work  has  been  done  for  the  investig^ation  of  the  petty 
trades  in  Germany;  and,  by  the  side  of  such  mono- 
graphs, from  which  nothing  can  be  learned  but  that  the 
petty  trades'  workers  are  in  a  miserable  condition,  and 
nothing  whatever  can  be  gathered  to  explain  why  these 
workers  prefer  their  conditions  to  those  of  factory  hands 
— there  is  no  lack  of  such  detailed  monographs  (such  as 
those  of  Thun,  Emil  Sax,  Paul  Voigt  on  the  Berlin 
cabinet-makers,  etc.),  in  which  one  sees  the  whole  of  the 
life  of  these  classes  of  workers,  the  difficulties  which  they 
have  to  cope  with,  and  the  technical  conditions  of  the 
trade,  and  finds  all  the  elements  for  an  independent 
judgment  upon  the  matter. 

It  is  evident  that  a  number  of  petty  trades  are  already 
now  doomed  to  disappear ;  but  there  are  others,  on  the 
contrary,  which  are  endowed  with  a  great  vitality,  and 
all  chances  are  in  favour  of  their  continuing  to  exist 
and  to  take  a  further  development  for  many  years  to 
come.  In  the  fabrication  of  such  textiles  as  are  woven 
by  millions  of  yards,  and  can  be  best  produced  with  the 
aid  of  a  complicated  machinery,  the  competition  of  the 
hand-loom  against  the  power-loom  is  evidently  nothing 
but  a  survival,  which  may  be  maintained  for  some  time 
by  certain  local  conditions,  but  finally  must  die  away. 
The  same  is  true  with  regard  to  many  branches  of  the 
iron  industries,  hardware  fabrication,  pottery,  and  so  on. 
But  wherever  the  direct  intervention  of  taste  and  in- 
ventiveness are  required,  wherever  new  patterns  of  goods 
requiring  a  continual  renewal  of  machinery  and  tools 
must  continually  be  introduced  in  order  to  feed  the 
demand,  as  is  the  case  with  all  fancy  textiles,  even 
though  they  be  fabricated  to  supply  the  millions ;  wher- 
ever a  great  variety  of  goods  and  the  uninterrupted 
invention  of  new  ones  goes  on.  a.s  is  the  case  in  the  toy 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES   AND    INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       1 65 

trade,  in  instrument  making,  watch  making,  bicycle 
mciking  and  so  on ;  and  finally,  wherever  the  artistic 
feeling  of  the  individual  worker  makes  the  best  part  of 
his  goods,  as  is  the  case  in  hundreds  of  branches  of 
small  articles  of  luxury,  there  is  a  wide  field  for  petty 
trades,  rural  workshops,  domestic  industries,  and  the 
like.  More  fresh  air,  more  ideas,  more  general  con- 
ceptions are  evidently  required  in  those  industries.  But 
where  the  spirit  of  initiative  has  been  awakened  in  one 
way  or  another,  we  see  the  petty  industries  taking  a 
new  development  in  Germany,  as  we  have  just  seen  that 
being  done  in  France. 

Now,  in  nearly  all  the  petty  trades  in  Germany,  the 
position  of  the  workers  is  unanimously  described  as 
most  miserable,  and  the  many  admirers  of  centralisation 
which  we  find  in  Germany  always  insist  upon  this  misery 
in  order  to  predict,  and  to  call  for,  the  disappearance  of 
"  those  mediaeval  survivals  "  which  "  capitalist  centrali- 
sation "  must  supplant  for  the  benefit  of  the  worker. 
The  reality  is,  however,  that  when  we  compare  the  miser- 
able conditions  of  the  workers  in  the  petty  trades  with 
the  conditions  of  the  wage  workers  in  the  factories,  in 
the  same  regions  and  in  the  same  trades,  we  see  that  the 
very  same  misery  prevails  among  the  factory  workers. 
They  live  upon  wages  of  from  nine  to  eleven  shillings  a 
week,  in  town  slums  instead  of  the  country.  They  work 
eleven  hours  a  day,  and  they  also  are  subject  to  the 
extra  misery  thrown  upon  them  during  the  frequently 
recurring  crises.  It  is  only  after  they  have  undergone 
all  sorts  of  sufferings  in  their  struggles  against  their 
employers  that  some  factory  workers  succeed,  more  or 
less,  here  and  there,  to  wrest  from  their  employers  a 
"  living  wage  " — and  this  again  only  in  certain  trades. 

To  welcome  all  these  sufferings,  seeing  in  them  the 
action  of  a  "  natural  law  "  and  a  necessary  step  towards 
the  necessary  concentration  of  industry,  would  be  simply 
absurd     While  to  maintain  that  the  pauperisation  of  all 


1 66  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

workers  and  the  wreckage  of  all  village  industries  are  a 
necessary  step  towards  a  higher  form  of  industrial  or- 
ganisation would  be,  not  only  to  affirm  much  more  than 
one  is  entitled  to  affirm  under  the  present  imperfect 
state  of  economical  knowledge,  but  to  show  an 
absolute  want  of  comprehension  of  the  sense  of  both 
natural  and  economic  laws.  Every  one,  on  the  con- 
trary, who  has  studied  the  question  of  the  growth  of 
great  industries  on  its  own  merits,  will  undoubtedly 
agree  with  Thorold  Rogers,  who  considered  the  suffer- 
ings inflicted  upon  the  labouring  classes  for  that  purpose 
as  having  been  of  no  necessity  whatever,  and  simply 
having  been  inflicted  to  suit  the  temporary  interests  of 
the  few — by  no  means  those  of  the  nation.* 

Moreover,  every  one  knows  to  what  extent  the  labour 
of  children  and  girls  is  resorted  to  even  in  the  most 
prosperous  factories — even  in  this  country  which  stands 
foremost  in  industrial  development.  Some  figures  rela- 
tive to  this  subject  were  given  in  the  preceding  chapter. 
And  this  fact  is  not  an  accident  which  might  be  easily 
removed,  as  Maurice  Block — a  great  admirer,  of  course, 
of  the  factory  system — tries  to  represent  itt  The  low 
wages  paid  to  children  and  youths  are  one  of  the  neces- 
sary elements  in  the  cheapness  of  the  factory  produce 
in  all  textiles,  and,  consequently,  of  the  very  competi- 
tion of  the  factory  with  the  petty  trades.  I  have  men- 
tioned besides,  whilst  speaking  of  France,  what  are  the 
effects  of  "  concentrated "  industries  upon  village  life ; 
and  in  Thun*s  work,  and  in  many  others  as  well,  one  may 
find  enough  of  ghastly  instances  of  what  are  the  effects 
of  accumulations  of  girls  in  the  factories.  To  idealise 
the  modern  factory,  in  order  to  depreciate  the  so-called 
"  mediaeval "  forms  of  the  small  industries,  is  conse- 
quently— to  say  the  least — as  unreasonable  as  to  idealise 

*  The  Economic  Interpretation  of  History. 

f  Les  Pr ogres  de  la  Science  economique  depuis  Adam   Smith,  Paris 
1890,  t.  i.,  pp.  460,  461. 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       167 

the  latter  and  try  to  bring-  mankind  back  to  isolated 
home-spinning  and  home-weaving  in  every  peasant 
house. 

One  fact  dominates  all  the  investigations  which  have 
been  made  into  the  conditions  of  the  small  industries. 
We  find  it  in  Germany,  as  well  as  in  France  or  in 
Russia.  In  an  immense  number  of  trades  it  is  not  the 
superiority  of  the  technical  organisation  of  the  trade 
in  a  factory  nor  the  economies  realised  on  the  prime- 
motor  which  militate  against  the  small  industry  in  favour 
of  the  factories,  but  the  more  advantageous  conditions 
for  selling  the  produce  and  for  buying  the  raw  produce 
which  are  at  the  disposal  of  big  concerns.  Wherever 
this  difficulty  has  been  overcome,  either  by  means  of 
association  or  in  consequence  of  a  market  being  secured 
for  the  sale  of  the  produce,  it  has  always  been  found — 
first,  that  the  conditions  of  the  workers  or  artisans  im- 
mediately improved ;  and  next,  that  a  rapid  progress 
was  realised  in  the  technical  aspects  of  the  respective 
industries  :  new  processes  were  introduced  to  improve  the 
produce  or  to  increase  the  rapidity  of  its  fabrication ; 
new  machine-tools  were  invented,  or  new  motors  were 
resorted  to,  or  the  trade  was  reorganised  so  as  to  diminish 
the  costs  of  production.  On  the  contrary,  wherever  the 
helpless,  isolated  artisans  and  workers  continue  to  re- 
main at  the  mercy  of  the  wholesale  buyers,  who  always 
— since  Adam  Smith's  time — "  openly  or  tacitly  "  agree 
to  act  as  one  man  to  bring  down  the  prices  almost  to 
a  starvation  level — and  such  is  the  case  for  the  immense 
number  of  the  small  and  village  industries — their  con- 
dition is  so  bad  that  only  the  longing  of  the  workers 
after  a  certain  relative  independence,  and  their  know- 
ledge of  what  awaits  them  in  the  factory,  prevent  them 
from  joining  the  ranks  of  the  factory  hands.  Knowing 
that  in  most  cases  the  advent  of  the  factory  would  mean 
no  work  at  all  for  most  men,  and  the  taking  of  the 
children  and  girls  to  the  factory,  they  do  the  utmost  to 
prevent  it  from  appearing  at  all  in  the  village. 


168  FtELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

As  to  combinations  in  the  villages,  co-operation 
and  the  like,  one  must  never  forget  how  jealously  the 
German,  the  French,  the  Russian  and  the  Austrian  Gov- 
ernments have  hitherto  prevented  the  workers,  and 
especially  the  village  workers^  from  entering  into  any 
sorts  of  combinations  for  economical  purposes.  To  keep 
the  peasant  at  the  lowest  possible  level,  by  means  of 
taxation,  serfdom,  and  the  like,  has  been,  and  is  still,  the 
poHcy  of  most  continental  states.  It  was  only  fourteen 
years  ago  that  some  extension  of  the  association  rights 
was  granted  in  Germany,  and  even  now  a  mere  co- 
operative association  for  the  sale  of  the  artisans'  work 
is  soon  reported  as  a  "  political  association  "  and  sub- 
mitted as  such  to  the  usual  limitations,  such  as  the  ex- 
clusion of  women  arid  the  like.  A  striking  example  of 
that  policy  as  regards  a  village  association  is  given  by 
Prof.  Issaieff,  who  also  mentions  the  severe  measures 
taken  by  the  wholesale  buyers  in  the  toy  trade  to  prevent 
the  workers  from  entering  into  direct  intercourse  with 
foreign  buyers. 

When  one  examines  with  more  than  a  superficial 
attention  the  life  of  the  small  industries  and  their 
struggles  for  life,  one  sees  that  when  they  perish,  they 
perish — not  because  "  an  economy  can  be  realised  by 
using  a  hundred  horse-power  motor,  instead  of  a  hun- 
dred small  motors  " — this  inconveniency  never  fails  to 
be  mentioned,  although  it  is  easily  obviated  in  Sheffield, 
in  Paris,  and  many  other  places  by  hiring  workshops 
with"  steam-power,  and,  still  more,  as  was  so  truly  ob- 
served by  Prof.  W.  Unwin,  by  the  electric  transmission 
of  power.  They  do  not  perish  because  a  substantial 
economy  can  be  realised  in  the  factory  production — in 
many  more  cases  than  is  usually  supposed,  the  fact  is 
even  the  reverse — but  because  the  capitalist  who  estab- 
lishes a  factory  emancipates  himself  from  the  wholesale 
and  retail  dealers  in  raw  materials ;  and  especially, 
because  he  emancipates  himself  from  the  buyers  of  his 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL   VILLAGES.       169 

produce  and  can  deal  directly  with  the  wholesale  buyer 
and  exporter;  or  else  he  concentrates  in  one  concern 
the  different  stages  of  fabrication  of  a  given  produce. 
The  pages  which  Schulze-Gawernitz  has  given  to  the 
organisation  of  the  cotton  industry  in  England,  and  to 
the  difficulties  which  the  German  cotton-mill  owners 
had  to  contend  with  so  long  as  they  were  dependent 
upon  Liverpool  for  raw  cotton,  are  most  instructive  in  this 
direction.  And  what  characterises  the  cotton  trade  pre- 
vails in  all  other  industries  as  well.  If  the  Shef&eld 
cutlers  who  now  work  in  their  tiny  workshops,  in  one 
of  the  above-mentioned  buildings  supplied  with  wheel- 
power,  were  incorporated  in  one  big  factory,  the  chief 
advantage  which  would  be  realised  in  the  factory  would 
not  be  an  economy  in  the  costs  of  production  in  com- 
parison to  the  quality  of  the  produce ;  with  a  share- 
holders' company  the  costs  might  even  increase.  And 
yet  the  profits  (including  wages)  would  be  much  greater 
than  the  aggregate  earnings  of  the  workers,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  reduced  costs  of  purchase  of  iron  and  coal, 
and  the  facilities  for  the  sale  of  the  produce.  The  great 
concern  would  thus  find  its  advantages — ^not  in  such 
factors  as  are  imposed  by  the  technical  necessities  of 
the  trade  at  the  time  being,  but  in  such  factors  as  could 
be  eliminated  by  co-operative  organisation.  All  these 
are  elementary  notions  among  practical  men.  It  hardly 
need  be  added  that  a  further  advantage  which  the  fac- 
tory owner  has  is,  that  he  can  find  a  sale  even  for  produce 
of  the  most  inferior  quality,  provided  there  is  a  con- 
siderable quantity  of  it  to  be  sold.  All  those  who  are 
acquainted  with  commerce  know,  indeed,  what  an  im- 
mense bulk  of  the  world's  trade  consists  of  "  shoddy," 
patraque,  "  Red  Indians'  blankets,"  and  the  like,  shipped 
to  distant  countries.  Whole  cities — ^we  just  saw — pro- 
duce nothing  but  "  shoddy  ". 

Altogether,   it  may  be  taken  as  one  of  the  funda- 
mental facts  of  the  economical  life  of  Europe  that  the 


170  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

defeat  of  a  number  of  small  trades,  artisan  work  and 
domestic  industries  came  through  their  being  incapable 
of  organising  the  sale  of  their  produce — not  from  the 
-production  itself.  The  same  thing  recurs  at  every  page 
of  economical  history.  The  incapacity  of  organising  the 
sale,  without  being  enslaved  by  the  merchant,  was  the 
leading  feature  of  the  mediaeval  cities,  which  gradually 
fell  under  the  economical  and  political  yoke  of  the 
Guild-Merchant,  simply  because  they  were  not  able  to 
maintain  the  sale  of  their  manufactures  by  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole,  or  to  organise  the  sale  of  a  new 
produce  in  the  interest  of  the  community.  When  the 
markets  for  such  commodities  came  to  be  Asia  on  the 
one  side  and  the  New  World  on  the  other  side,  such  was 
fatally  the  case.  Even  nowadays,  when  we  see  the 
co-operative  societies  beginning  to  succeed  in  their  pro- 
ductive workshops,  while  twenty  years  ago  they  invari- 
ably failed  in  their  capacity  of  producers,  we  may  con- 
clude that  the  cause  of  their  previous  failures  was  not  in 
their  incapacity  of  properly  and  economically  organising 
production,  but  in  their  inabihty  of  acting  as  sellers  and 
exporters  of  the  produce  they  had  fabricated.  Their 
present  successes,  on  the  contrary,  are  fully  accounted  for 
by  the  network  of  distributive  societies  which  they  have 
at  their  command.  The  sale  has  been  simplified  and 
production  has  been  rendered  possible  by  first  organising 
the  market. 

Such  are  a  few  conclusions  which  may  be  drawn  from 
a  study  of  the  small  industries  in  Germany  and  else- 
where. And  it  may  be  safely  said,  with  regard  to 
Germany,  that  if  measures  are  not  taken  for  driving 
the  peasants  from  the  land  on  the  same  scale  as  they 
have  been  taken  in  this  country;  if,  on  the  contrary, 
the  numbers  of  small  landholders  multiply,  they  neces- 
sarily will  turn  to  various  small  trades,  in  addition  to 
agriculture,  as  they  have  done,  and  are  doing  in  France. 
Every  step  that  may  be  taken,  either  for  awakening 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL   VILLAGES.       17I 

intellectual  life  in  the  villages,  or  for  assuring  the 
peasants'  or  the  country's  rights  upon  the  land,  will 
necessarily  further  the  growth  of  industries  in  the  vil- 
lages.* 


Petty  Trades  in  other  Countries. 

If  it  were  worth  extending  our  inquiry  to  other 
countries,  we  should  find  a  vast  field  for  most  inter- 
esting observations  in  Switzerland  There  we  should 
see  the  same  vitality  in  a  variety  of  petty  industries, 
and  we  could  mention  what  has  been  done  in  the 
different  cantons  for  maintaining  the  small  trades  by 
three  different  sets  of  measures :  the  extension  of  co- 
operation ;  a  wide  extension  of  technical  education  in 
the  schools  and  the  introduction  of  new  branches  of 
semi-artistic  production  in  different  parts  of  the  country ; 
and  the  supply  of  cheap  motive  power  in  the  houses 
by  means  of  a  hydraulic  or  an  electric  transmission  of 
power  borrowed  from  the  waterfalls.  A  separate  book 
of  the  greatest  interest  and  value  could  be  written  on  this 
subject,  especially  on  the  impulse  given  to  a  number  of 
petty  trades,  old  and  new,  by  means  of  a  cheap  supply 
of  motive  power. 

Belgium  would  offer  an  equal  interest  Belgium 
is  certainly  a  country  of  centralised  industry,  and  a 
country  in  which  the  productivity  of  the  worker  stands 
at  a  high  level,  the  average  annual  productivity  of  each 
industrial  workman — men,  women,  and  children — attain- 
ing the  high  figure  of  £22^  (5660  francs)  per  head. 
Coal  mines,  in  which  more  than  a  thousand  workers  are 
employed,  are  numerous,  and  there  is  a  fair  number  of 
textile  factories  in  each  of  which  from  300  to  700  workers 
are  occupied.  And  yet,  if  we  exclude  from  the  indus- 
trial workers'  population  of  Belgium,  which  numbered 

*  See  Appendix  Q. 


172  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND    WORKSHOPS. 

384,065  persons  in  1880  (423,755  with  the  clerks, 
travellers,  supervisors  and  so  on),  nearly  100,000  work- 
men (94,757)  who  are  employed  in  the  coal  mines,  we 
find  that  out  of  the  remaining  290,308  workers  very 
nearly  one-half,  i.e.,  132,840  persons,  work  in  workshops 
in  which  less  than  fifty  persons  are  employed,  while 
84,500  persons  out  of  these  last  are  employed  in  25,959 
workshops,  which  thus  have  an  average  of  three  workers 
per  workshop.*  We  may  thus  say  that — taking  the 
mines  out  of  account — more  than  one-fourth  part  of  the 
Belgian  industrial  workers  (three-tenths)  are  employed 
in  small  workshops  which  have,  on  the  average,  less  than 
three  workers  each,  besides  the  master,  t 

What  is  still  more  remarkable  is,  that  the  number 
of  small  workshops,  in  which  from  one  to  three  aids 
only  are  employed  by  the  master,  attains  the  consider- 
able figure  of  2293  in  the  textile  industries,  notwith- 
standing the  high  concentration  of  these  industries,  the 
fact  being,  as  was  already  mentioned  on  a  preceding 
page,  that  factories  which  used  to  employ  500  or  600 
cloth  weavers  are  silent,  while  cloth  is  being  woven  by 
the  clothiers  in  their  houses.  As  to  the  machinery  and 
hardware  trades,  the  small  workshops  in  which  the  master 
works  with  from  two  to  four  assistants  or  journeymen 
are  very  numerous,  to  say  nothing  of  the  gun  trade  which 
is  a  petty  trade  par  excellence  (265  workshops  with 
less  than  three  workers),  and  the  furniture  trade  which 
has  lately  taken  a  great  development  A  highly  concen- 
trated industry,  and  a  high  productivity,  as  well  as  a 
considerable  export  trade  {£g  per  head  of  population), 
which  all  testify  to  a  high  industrial  developmerit  of 


*  Out  of  this  number,  16,220  workshops  occupy  58,545  workers. 
Moreover,  there  are  5975  artisans. 

f  When  shall  we  have  for  the  United  Kingdom  a  census  as  complete 
as  we  have  it  for  France  and  Belgium  ?  that  is,  a  census  in  which  the 
employed  and  the  employers  will  be  counted  separately,  instead  of  throw- 
ing into  one  heap  the  owner  of  the  factory,  the  managers,  the  engineers 
and  the  workers. 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL   VILLAGES.       173 

the  country,  thus  go  hand  in  hand  with  a  high  develop- 
ment of  the  domestic  and  petty  trades. 

It  hardly  need  be  said  that  in  Austria,  Hungary, 
Italy,  and  even  the  United  States,  the  petty  trades 
occupy  a  prominent  position,  and  play  in  the  sum  total 
of  industrial  activity  an  even  much  greater  part  than 
in  France,  Belgium,  or  Germany.  But  it  is  especially 
in  Russia  that  we  can  fully  appreciate  the  importance 
of  the  rural  industries  and  the  terrible  sufferings  which 
would  be  quite  uselessly  inflicted  on  the  population  if 
the  policy  of  the  State  were  to  follow  the  advice  of  some 
arch-reactionary  economists  of  the  Moscow  Gazette 
school,  and  to  throw  the  tremendous  weight  of  the  State 
in  favour  of  a  pauperisation  of  the  peasants  and  an 
artificial  annihilation  of  the  rural  trades,  in  order  to 
create  a  centralised  great  industry. 

The  most  exhaustive  inquiries  into  the  present  state, 
the  growth,  the  technical  development  of  the  rural  in- 
dustries, and  the  difficulties  they  have  to  contend  with, 
have  been  made  in  Russia.  A  house-to-house  inquiry 
which  embraces  nearly  1,000,000  peasants'  houses  has 
been  made  in  various  provinces  of  Russia,  and  its  re- 
sults already  represent  450  volumes,  printed  by  different 
county  councils  (Zemstvos).  Besides,  in  the  fifteen 
volumes  published  by  the  Petty  Trades  Committee,  and 
still  more  in  the  publications  of  the  Moscow  Statistical 
Committee,  and  of  many  provincial  assemblies,  we  find 
exhaustive  lists  giving  the  name  of  each  worker,  the 
extent  and  the  state  of  his  fields,  his  live  stock,  the  value 
of  his  agricultural  and  industrial  production,  his  earnings 
from  both  sources,  and  his  yearly  budget ;  while  hun- 
dreds of  separate  trades  have  been  described  in  separate 
monographs  from  the  technical,  economical,  and  sanitary 
points  of  view. 

The  results  obtained  from  these  inquiries  are  really 
imposing,  as  it  appears  that  out  of  the  80,000,000 
population  of  European  Russia  no  less  tlian  7,500,000 


174  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

persons  are  engaged  in  the  domestic  trades,  and  that 
their  production  reaches,  at  the  lowest  estimate,  more 
than  ;^  1 50,000,000,  and  most  probably  ;^200,ooo,ooo 
(2,000,000,000  roubles)  every  year.*  It  thus  exceeds 
the  total  production  of  the  great  industry.  As  to  the 
relative  importance  of  the  two  for  the  working  classes 
suffice  it  to  say  that  even  in  the  government  of  Moscow, 
which  is  the  chief  manufacturing  region  of  Russia  (its 
factories  yield  upwards  of  one-fifth  in  value  of  the 
3-ggregate  industrial  production  of  European  Russia), 
the  aggregate  incomes  derived  by  the  population  from 
the  domestic  industries  are  three  times  larger  than  the 
aggregate  wages  earned  in  the  factories. 

The  most  striking  feature  of  the  Russian  domestic 
trades  is  that  the  sudden  start  which  was  made  of  late 
by  the  factories  in  Russia  did  not  prejudice  the  domestic 
industries.  On  the  contrary,  it  gave  a  new  impulse  to 
their  extension ;  they  grow  and  develop  precisely  in 
those  regions  where  the  factories  are  growing  up  fastest. 
Another  most  suggestive  feature  is  the  following : 
although  the  unfertile  provinces  of  Central  Russia  have 
been  from  time  immemorial  the  seat  of  all  kinds  of  petty 
trades,  several  domestic  industries  of  modern  origin  are 
developing  in  those  provinces  which  are  best  favoured 
by  soil  and  climate.  Thus,  the  Stavropol  government 
of  North  Caucasus,  where  the  peasantry  have  plenty  of 
fertile  soil,  has  suddenly  become  the  seat  of  a  widely 
developed  silk-weaving  industry  in  the  peasants'  houses, 
and  now  it  supplies  Russia  with  cheap  silks  which  have 
completely  expelled  from  the  market  the  plain  silks 
formerly  imported  from  France.     In  Orenburg  and  on 


•  It  appears  from  the  house-to-house  inquiry,  which  embodies  855,000 
workers,  that  the  yearly  value  of  the  produce  which  they  use  to  manu- 
facture reaches  ;£'2 1,087,000  (the  rouble  at  24d.),  that  is,  an  average  of 
£25  per  worker.  An  average  of  ;^20  for  the  7,500,000  persons  engaged 
in  domestic  industries  would  already  give  ;£i50,ooo,ooo  for  their  aggregate 
production ;  but  the  most  authoritative  investigators  consider  that  figure 
as  below  the  reality. 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL   VILLAGES.       1/5 

the  Black  Sea,  the  petty  trades*  fabrication  of  agricultural 
machinery,  which  has  grown  up  lately,  is  another  instance 
in  point 

The  capacities  of  the  Russian  domestic  industrial 
workers  for  co-operative  organisation  would  be  worthy 
of  more  than  a  passing  mention.  As  to  the  cheapness 
of  the  produce  manufactured  in  the  villages,  which  is 
really  astonishing,  it  cannot  be  explained  in  full  by  the 
exceedingly  long  hours  of  labour  and  the  starvation 
earnings,  because  overwork  (t\\'elve  to  sixteen  hours  of 
labour)  and  very  low  wages  are  characteristic  of  the 
Russian  factories  as  well.  It  depends  also  upon  the 
circumstance  that  the  peasant  who  grows  his  own  food, 
but  suffers  from  a  constant  want  of  money,  sells  the 
produce  of  his  industrial  labour  at  any  price.  Therefore, 
all  manufactured  goods  used  by  the  Russian  peasantry, 
save  the  printed  cottons,  are  the  production  of  the  rural 
manufactures.  But  many  articles  of  luxury,  too,  are 
made  in  the  villages,  especially  around  Moscow,  by 
peasants  who  continue  to  cultivate  their  allotments. 
The  silk  hats  which  are  sold  in  the  best  Moscow  shops, 
and  bear  the  stamp  of  N ouveautes  Parisiennes,  are  made 
by  the  Moscow  peasants  ;  so  also  the  "  Vienna  "  furniture 
of  the  best  "  Vienna  "  shops,  even  if  it  goes  to  supply  the 
palaces.  And  what  is  most  to  be  wondered  at  is  not 
the  skill  of  the  peasants — agricultural  work  is  no  obstacle 
to  acquiring  industrial  skill — but  the  rapidity  with  which 
the  fabrication  of  fine  goods  has  spread  in  such  villages 
as  formerly  manufactured  only  goods  of  the  roughest 
description.* 

As  to  the  relations  between  agriculture  and  industry, 
one  cannot  peruse  the  documents  accumulated  by  the 
Russian  statisticians  without  coming  to  the  conclusion 
that,  far  from  damaging  agriculture,  the  domestic  trades, 
on  the  contrary,  are  the  best  means  for  improving  it, 

•  Some  of  the  produces  of  the  Russian  rural  induatcies  h,^.v^  lately  beqa 
introduced  in  this  country,  and  find  a  good  sale. 


176  FIELDS,   FACTORIES    AND   WORKSHOPS. 

and  the  more  so,  as  for  several  months  every  year  the 
Russian  peasant  has  nothing  to  do  in  the  fields.  There 
are  regions  where  agriculture  has  been  totally  abandoned 
for  the  industries ;  but  these  are  regions  where  it  was 
rendered  impossible  by  the  very  small  allotments  granted 
to  the  liberated  serfs,  and  especially  the  bad  quality  of, 
and  the  want  of  meadows  in  them,  as  by  the  general 
impoverishment  of  the  peasants,  following  a  very  high 
taxation  and  very  high  redemption  taxes.  But  wherever 
the  allotments  are  reasonable  and  the  peasants  are  less 
overtaxed,  they  continue  to  cultivate  the  land  and  their 
fields  are  kept  in  better  order,  as  also  the  average 
numbers  of  live  stock  are  higher  where  agriculture  is 
carried  on  in  association  with  the  domestic  trades. 
Even  those  peasants  whose  allotments  are  small  find  the 
means  of  renting  more  land  if  they  earn  some  money 
from  their  industrial  work.  As  to  the  relative  welfare, 
I  need  hardly  add  that  it  always  stands  on  the  side  of 
those  villages  which  combine  both  kinds  of  work.  Vors- 
ma  and  Pavlovo — two  cutlery  villages,  one  of  which  is 
purely  industrial,  while  the  inhabitants  of  the  other 
continue  to  till  the  soil — could  be  quoted  as  a  striking 
instance  for  such  a  comparison.* 

Much  more  ought  to  be  said  with  regard  to  the  rural 
industries  of  Russia,  especially  to  show  how  easily  the 
peasants  associate  for  buying  new  machinery,  or  for 
avoiding  the  middleman  in  their  purchases  of  raw  pro- 
duce— as  soon  as  misery  is  no  obstacle  to  the  association. 
Belgium,  and  especially  Switzerland,  could  also  be  quoted 
for  similar  illustrations,  but  the  above  will  be  enough  to 
give  a  general  idea  of  the  importance,  the  vital  powers, 
and  the  perfectibility  of  the  rural  industries. 

*  Prugavin,  in  the  V^'estnik  PromyshUnno^ti,  June,  i88i^. 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.        I77 

Conclusions. 

The  facts  which  we  have  briefly  reviewed  show,  to 
some  extent,  the  benefits  which  could  be  derived  from  a 
combination  of  agriculture  with  industry,  if  the  latter 
could  come  to  the  village,  not  in  its  present  shape  of 
a  capitalist  factory,  but  in  the  shape  of  a  socially  or- 
ganised   industrial    production,    with    the  full    aid    of 
machinery  and  technical  knowledge.     In  fact,  the  most 
prominent  feature  of  the  petty  trades  is  that  a  relative 
well-being  is  found  only  where  they  are  combined  with 
agriculture :   where  the  workers  have  remained  in  pos- 
session of  the  soil  and  continue  \o  cultivate  it.     Even 
amidst  the  weavers  of  France  or  Moscow,  who  have  to 
reckon   with   the   competition   of  the   factory,    relative 
well-being  prevails  so  long  as  they  are  not  compelled  \ 
to  part  with  the  soil     On  the  contrary,  as  soon  as  high     \ 
taxation  or  the  impoverishment  during  a  crisis  has  com-      I 
pelled  the  domestic  worker  to  abandon  his  last  plot  of     / 
land  to  the  usurer,  misery  creeps  into  his  house.     The    / 
sweater  becomes  all-powerful,  frightful  overwork  is  re- / 
sorted  to,  and  the  whole  trade  often  falls  into  decay.       / 

Such  facts,  as  well  as  the  pronounced  tendency  of 
the  factories  towards  migrating  to  the  villages,  are  very 
suggestive.  Of  course,  it  would  be  a  great  mistake  to 
imagine  that  industry  ought  to  return  to  its  hand-work 
stage  in  order  to  be  combined  with  agriculture.  When- 
ever a  saving  of  human  labour  can  be  obtained  by  means 
of  a  machine,  the  machine  is  welcome  and  will  be  re- 
sorted to,  and  there  is  hardly  one  single  branch  of  industry 
into  which  machinery  work  could  not  be  introduced  with 
great  advantage,  at  least  at  some  of  the  stages  of  the 
fabrication.  In  the  present  chaotic  state  of  industry, 
nails  and  cheap  pen-knives  can  be  made  by  hand,  and 
plain  cottons  be  woven  in  the  hand-loom ;  but  such  an 
anomaly  will  not  last.  The  machine  will  supersede 
hand-work  in  the  manufacture  of  plain  goods,  while  hand- 

12 


178  FIELDS,  FACTORIES  AND  WORKSHOPS. 

work  probably  will  extend  its  domain  in  the  artistic 
finishing  of  many  things  which  are  now  made  entirely 
in  the  factory,  as  well  as  in  thousands  of  young  and 
new  trades. 

But  the  question  arises,  Why  should  not  the  cottons, 
the  woollen  cloth,  and  the  silks,  now  woven  by  hand 
in  the  villages,  be  woven  by  machinery  in  the  same 
villages,  without  ceasing  to  remain  connected  with  work 
in  the  fields?  Why  should  not  hundreds  of  domestic 
industries,  now  carried  on  entirely  by  hand,  resort  to 
labour-saving  machines,  as  they  already  do  in  the  knit- 
ting trade  and  many  others?  There  is  no  reason  why 
the  small  motor  should  not  be  of  much  more  general 
use  than  it  is  now,  wherever  there  is  no  need  to  have  a 
factory ;  and  there  is  no  reason  why  the  village  should 
not  have  its  small  factory  wherever  factory  work  is  pre- 
ferable, as  we  already  see  it  occasionally  in  certain 
villages  in  France.  More  than  that.  There  is  no 
reason  why  the  factory,  with  its  motive  force  and  ma- 
chinery, should  not  belong  to  the  community,  as  is  already 
the  case  for  motive  power  in  the  above-mentioned  work- 
shops and  small  factories  in  the  French  portion  of  the 
Jura  hills.  It  is  evident  that  now,  under  the  capitalist 
system,  the  factory  is  the  curse  of  the  village,  as  it  comes 
to  overwork  children  and  to  make  paupers  out  of  its 
male  inhabitants ;  and  it  is  quite  natural  that  it  should 
be  opposed  by  all  means  by  the  workers,  if  they  have 
succeeded  in  maintaining  their  olden  trades'  organisa- 
tions (as  at  Sheffield,  or  Solingen),  or  if  they  have  not 
yet  been  reduced  to  sheer  misery  (as  in  the  Jura).  But 
under  a  more  rational  social  organisation  the  factory 
would  find  no  such  obstacles :  it  would  be  a  boon  to  the 
village.  And  there  is  already  unmistakable  evidence  to 
show  that  a  move  in  this  direction  is  being  made  in  a 
few  village  communities. 

The  moral  and  physical  advantages  which  man  would 
derive  from  dividing  his  work  Ijetween  the  field  and  the 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       I79 

workshop  are  self-evident.  But  the  difficulty  is,  we  are 
told,  in  the  necessary  centralisation  of  the  modem  in- 
dustries. In  industry,  as  well  as  in  politics,  centralisation 
has  so  many  admirers!  But  in  both  spheres  the  ideal 
of  the  centralisers  badly  needs  revision.  In  fact,  if  we 
analyse  the  modern  industries,  we  soon  discover  that 
for  some  of  them  the  co-operation  of  hundreds,  or  even 
thousands,  of  workers  gathered  at  the  same  spot  is  really 
necessary.  The  great  iron  works  and  mining  enter- 
prises decidedly  belong  to  that  category;  oceanic 
steamers  cannot  be  built  in  village  factories.  But  very 
many  of  our  big  factories  are  nothing  else  but  agglomera- 
tions under  a  common  management,  of  several  distinct 
industries ;  while  others  are  mere  agglomerations  of 
hundreds  of  copies  of  the  very  same  machine ;  such  are 
most  of  our  gigantic  spinning  and  weaving  establish- 
ments. The  manufacture  being  a  strictly  private  enter- 
prise, its  owners  find  it  advantageous  to  have  all  the 
branches  of  a  given  industry  under  their  own  manage- 
ment; they  thus  cumulate  the  profits  of  the  successive 
transformations  of  the  raw  material.  And  when  several 
thousand  power-looms  are  combined  in  one  factory,  the 
owner  finds  his  advantage  in  being  able  to  hold  the 
command  of  the  market  But  from  a  technical  point 
of  view  the  advantages  of  such  an  accumulation  are 
trifling  and  often  doubtful.  Even  so  centralised  an 
industry  as  that  of  the  cottons  does  not  suffer  at  all  from 
the  division  of  production  of  one  given  sort  of  goods 
at  its  different  stages  between  several  separate  factories  : 
we  see  it  at  Manchester  and  its  neighbouring  towns. 
As  to  the  petty  trades,  no  inconvenience  is  experienced 
from  a  still  greater  subdivision  between  the  workshops 
in  the  watch  trade  and  very  many  others. 

We  often  hear  that  one  horse-power  costs  so  much 
in  a  small  engine,  and  so  much  less  in  an  engine  ten 
times  more  powerful;  that  the  pound  of  cotton  yarn 
costs  much  less  when  the  factory  doubles  the  number  of 


iSo  FIELDS,   FACtORiES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

its  spindles.  But,  in  the  opinion  of  the  best  engineering 
authorities,  such  as  Prof.  W.  Unwin,  the  hydraulic,  and 
especially  the  electric,  distribution  of  power  from  a  cen- 
tral station  sets  aside  the  first  part  of  the  argument. 
As  to  its  second  part,  calculations  of  this  sort  are  only 
good  for  those  industries  which  prepare  the  half-manu- 
factured produce  for  further  transformations.  As  to 
those  countless  descriptions  of  goods  which  derive  their 
value  chiefly  from  the  intervention  of  skilled  labour, 
they  can  be  best  fabricated  in  smaller  factories  which 
employ  a  few  hundreds,  or  even  a  few  scores  of  opera- 
tives. Even  under  the  present  conditions  the  leviathan 
factories  offer  great  inconveniences,  as  they  cannot 
rapidly  reform  their  machinery  according  to  the  con- 
stantly varying  demands  of  the  consumers.  How  many 
failures  of  great  concerns,  too  well  known  in  this 
country  to  need  be  named,  were  due  to  this  cause !  As 
for  the  new  branches  of  industry  which  I  have  mentioned 
at  the  beginning  of  the  previous  chapter,  they  always 
must  make  a  start  on  a  small  scale ;  and  they  can  pros- 
per in  small  towns  as  well  as  in  big  cities,  if  the  smaller 
agglomerations  are  provided  with  institutions  stimulating 
artistic  taste  and  the  genius  of  invention:  The  pro- 
gress achieved  of  late  in  toy  making,  as  also  the  high 
perfection  attained  in  the  fabrication  of  mathematical 
and  optical  instruments,  of  furniture,  of  small  luxury 
articles,  of  pottery  and  so  on,  are  instances  in  point 
Art  and  science  are  no  longer  the  monopoly  of  the  great 
cities,  and  further  progress  will  be  in  scattering  them  over 
the  country. 

The  geographical  distribution  of  industries  in  a  given 
country  evidently  depends  to  a  great  extent  upon  a 
•complexus  of  natural  conditions  ;  it  is  obvious  that  there, 
are  spots  which  are  best  suited  for  the  development  of 
certain  industries.  The  banks  of  the  Clyde  and  the 
Tyne  ajre  certainly  most  appropriate  for  shipbuilding 
.yards,  and  shipbuilding  yards  must  be  surrounded  by  a 


SMALL   INDUSTRIES  AND   INDUSTRIAL   VILLAGES.       l8l 

variety  of  workshops  and  factories.  The  industries  will 
always  find  some  advantages  in  being  grouped,  to  a 
limited  extent,  according  to  the  natural  features  of  sepa- 
rate regions.  But  we  must  recognise  that  now  they  are 
not  grouped  according  to  those  features.  Historical 
causes — chiefly  religious  wars  and  national  rivalries — 
iiave  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  their  growth  and  their 
present  distribution,  and  still  more  considerations  as  to 
the  facilities  for  sale  and  export ;  that  is,  considerations 
which  are  already  losing  their  importance  with  the 
increased  facilities  for  transport,  and  will  lose  it  still 
more  when  the  producers  produce  for  themselves, 
and  not  for  customers  far  away.  Why,  in  a  rationally 
organised  society,  ought  London  to  remain  a  great  centre 
for  the  jam  and  preserving  trade,  and  manufacture 
umbrellas  for  nearly  the  whole  of  the  United  Kingdom  ? 
Why  should  the  countless  Whitechapel  petty  trades  re- 
main where  they  are,  instead  of  being  spread  all  over 
the  country.?  There  is  no  reason  whatever  why  the 
mantles  which  are  worn  by  English  ladies  should  be 
sewn  at  Berlin  and  in  Whitechapel  instead  of  in  Devon- 
shire or  Derbyshire.  Why  should  Paris  refine  sugar  for 
almost  the  whole  of  France  ?  Why  should  one-half  of 
the  boots  and  shoes  used  in  the  United  States  be  manu- 
factured in  the  1 500  workshops  of  Massachusetts  ? 
There  is  absolutely  no  reason  why  these  and  hke 
anomalies  should  persist.  The  industries  must  scatter 
themselves  all  over  the  world,  and  the  scattering  of 
industries  amidst  all  civilised  nations  will  be  necessarily 
followed  by  a  further  scattering  of  factories  over  the 
territories  of  each  nation. 

Agriculture  is  so  much  in  need  of  aid  from  those 
who  inhabit  the  cities,  that  every  summer  thousands 
of  men  leave  their  slums  in  the  towns  and  go  to  the 
country  for  the  season  of  crops.  The  London  desti- 
tutes go  in  thousands  to  Kent  and  Sussex  as  hay- 
makers and  hop-pickers,  it  being  estimated  that  Kent 


1 82  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

alone  requires  80,000  additional  men  and  women  for 
hop-picking;  whole  villages  in  France  and  their  cot- 
tage industries  are  abandoned  in  the  summer,  and  the 
peasants  wander  to  the  more  fertile  parts  of  the 
country;  hundreds  of  thousands  of  human  beings  are 
transported  every  summer  to  the  prairies  of  Manitoba 
and  Dacota;  and  in  Russia  there  is  every  year  an 
exodus  of  several  millions  of  men  who  journey  from 
the  north  to  the  southern  prairies  for  harvesting  the 
crops ;  while  many  St  Petersburg  manufacturers  re- 
duce their  production  in  the  summer,  because  the 
operatives  return  to  their  native  villages  for  the  culture 
of  their  allotments.  Agriculture  cannot  be  carried  on 
without  additional  hands  in  the  summer;  but  it  still 
more  needs  temporary  aids  for  improving  the  soil, 
for  tenfolding  its  productive  powers.  Steam-digging, 
drainage,  and  manuring  would  render  the  heavy  clays 
in  the  north-west  of  London  a  much  richer  soil  than 
that  of  the  American  prairies.  To  become  fertile,  those 
clays  want  only  plain,  unskilled  human  labour,  such 
as  is  necessary  for  digging  the  soil,  laying  in  drainage 
tubes,  pulverising  phosphorites,  and  the  Hke;  and  that 
labour  would  be  gladly  done  by  the  factory  workers 
if  it  were  properly  organised  in  a  free  community  for 
the  benefit  of  the  whole  society.  The  soil  claims  that 
aid,  and  it  would  have  it  under  a  proper  organisation, 
even  if  it  were  necessary  to  stop  many  mills  in  the 
summer  for  that  purpose.  No  doubt  the  present  factory 
owners  would  consider  it  ruinous  if  they  had  to  stop 
their  mills  for  several  months  every  year,  because  the 
capital  engaged  in  a  factory  is  expected  to  pump  money 
every  day  and  every  hour,  if  possible.  But  that  is  the 
capitalist's  view  of  the  matter,  not  the  community's 
view.  As  to  the  workers,  who  ought  to  be  the  real 
managers  of  industries,  they  will  find  it  healthy  not 
to  perform  the  same  monotonous  work  all  the  year 
round,  and    they    will    abandon    it   for  the   summer,   if 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES   AND   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.       1 83 

indeed  they  do  not  find  the  means  of  keeping  the  fac- 
tory running  by  relieving  each  other  in  groups. 

The  scattering  of  industries  over  the  country — so  as 
to  bring  the  factory  amidst  the  fields,  to  make  agri- 
culture derive  all  those  profits  which  it  always  finds 
in  being  combined  with  industry  (see  the  Eastern  States 
of  America)  and  to  produce  a  combination  of  industrial 
with  agricultural  work — is  surely  the  next  step  to  be 
made,  as  soon  as  a  reorganisation  of  our  present  condi- 
tions is  possible.  It  is  being  made  already,  as  we  saw 
on  the  preceding  pages.  That  step  is  imposed  by  the 
very  necessity  of  producing  for  the  producers  them- 
selves ;  it  is  imposed  by  the  necessity  for  each  healthy 
man  and  woman  to  spend  a  part  of  their  lives  in  manual 
work  in  the  free  air ;  and  it  will  be  rendered  the  more 
necessary  when  the  great  social  movements,  which  have 
now  become  unavoidable,  come  to  disturb  the  present 
international  trade,  and  compel  each  nation  to  revert 
to  her  own  resources  for  her  own  maintenance.  Hu- 
manity as  a  whole,  as  well  as  each  separate  individual, 
will  be  gainers  by  the  change,  and  the  change  will  take 
place. 

However,  such  a  change  also  implies  a  thorough 
modification  of  our  present  system  of  education.  It 
implies  a  society  composed  of  men  and  women,  each 
of  whom  is  able  to  work  with  his  or  her  hands  as 
well  as  with  his  or  her  brain,  and  to  do  so  in  more 
directions  than  one.  This  "  integration  of  capacities " 
I  am  now  going  to  analyse. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

BRAIN   WORK  AND  MANUAL  WORK. 

Divorce  between  science  and  handicraft — Technical  education — Complete 
education — The  Moscow  system :  applied  at  Chicago,  Boston,  Aber- 
deen— Concrete  teaching — Present  waste  of  time — Science  and 
technics — Advantages  which  science  can  derive  from  a  combination 
of  brain  work  with  manual  work. 

In  olden  times  men  of  science,  and  especially  those 
who  have  done  most  to  forward  the  growth  of  natural 
philosophy,  did  not  despise  manual  work  and  handi- 
craft. Galileo  made  his  telescopes  with  his  own  hands. 
Newton  learned  in  his  boyhood  the  art  of  managing 
tools ;  he  exercised  his  young  mind  in  contriving  most 
ingenious  machines,  and  when  he  began  his  researches 
in  optics  he  was  able  himself  to  grind  the  lenses  for 
his  instruments,  and  himself  to  make  the  well-known 
telescope,  which,  for  its  time,  was  a  fine  piece  of  work- 
manship. Liebnitz  was  fond  of  inventing  machines : 
windmills  and  carriages  to  be  moved  without  horses 
preoccupied  his  mind  as  much  as  mathematical  and 
philosophical  speculations.  Linnaeus  became  a  botanist 
while  helping  his  father — a  practical  gardener — in  his 
daily  work.  In  short,  with  our  great  geniuses  handi- 
craft was  no  obstacle  to  abstract  researches — it  rather 
favoured  them.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  workers  of 
old  found  but  few  opportunities  for  mastering  science, 
many  of  them  had,  at  least,  their  intelligences  stimu- 
lated by  the  very  variety  of  work  which  was  performed 
in  the  then  unspecialised  workshops ;  and  some  of  them 

(184) 


BRAIN    WORK   AND    MANUAL   WORK.  1 85 

had  the  benefit  of  familiar  intercourse  with  men  of 
science.  Watt  and  Rennie  were  friends  with  Professor 
Robinson ;  Brindley,  the  road-maker,  despite  his  four- 
teen-pence-a-day  wages,  enjoyed  intercourse  with 
educated  men,  and  thus  developed  his  remarkable 
engineering  faculties ;  the  son  of  a  well-to-do  family 
could  "idle"'  at  a  wheelwright's  shop,,  so  as  to  become 
later  on  a  Smeaton  or  a  Stephenson. 

We  have  changed  all  that.  Under  the  pretext  of 
division  of  labour,  we  have  sharply  separated  the  brain 
worker  from  the  manual  worker.  The  masses  of  the 
workmen  do  not  receive  more  scientific  education  than 
their  grandfathers  did ;  but  they  have  been  deprived 
of  the  education  of  even  the  small  workshop,  while  their 
boys  and  girls  are  driven  into  a  mine  or  a  factory  from 
the  age  of  thirteen,  and  there  they  soon  forget  the  little 
they  may  have  learned  at  school  As  to  the  men  of 
science,  they  despise  manual  labour.  How  few  of  them 
would  be  able  to  make  a  telescope,  or  even  a  plainer 
instrument.''  Most  of  them  are  not  capable  of  even 
designing  a  scientific  instrument,  and  when  they  have 
given  a  vague  suggestion  to  the  instrument-maker  they 
leave  it  with  him  to  invent  the  apparatus  they  need. 
Nay,  they  have  raised  the  contempt  of  manual  labour 
to  the  height  of  a  theory.  "  The  man  of  science,"  they 
say,  "  must  discover  the  laws  of  nature,  the  civil  engineer 
must  apply  them,  and  the  worker  must  execute  in 
steel  or  wood,  in  iron  or  stone,  the  patterns  devised  by 
the  engineer.  He  must  work  with  machines  in- 
vented for  him,  not  by  him.  No  matter  if  he  does  not 
understand  them  and  cannot  improve  them :  the  scien- 
tific man  and  the  scientific  engineer  will  take  care  of 
the  progress  of  science  and  industry." 

It  may  be  objected  that  nevertheless  there  is  a  class 
of  men  who  belong  to  none  of  the  above  three 
divisions.  When  young  they  have  been  manual 
workers,  and  some  of  them  continue  to  be ;   but,  owing 


l86  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

to  some  happy  circumstances,  they  have  succeeded  in 
acquiring  some  scientific  knowledge,  and  thus  they  have 
combined  science  with  handicraft  Surely  there  are 
such  men;  happily  enough  there  is  a  nucleus  of  men 
who  have  escaped  the  so-much-advocated  specialisa- 
tion of  labour,  and  it  is  precisely  to  them  that  industry 
owes  its  chief  recent  inventions.  But  in  old  Europe 
at  least,  they  are  the  exceptions ;  they  are  the  irregulars 
— the  Cossacks  who  have  broken  the  ranks  and  pierced 
the  screens  so  carefully  erected  between  the  classes. 
And  they  are  so  few,  in  comparison  with  the  ever- 
growing requirements  of  industry — and  of  science  as 
well,  as  I  am  about  to  prove — that  all  over  the  world  we 
hear  complaints  about  the  scarcity  of  precisely  such 
men. 

What  is  the  meaning,  in  fact,  of  the  outcry  for 
technical  education  which  has  been  raised  at  one  and 
the  same  time  in  England,  in  France,  in  Germany, 
in  the  States,  and  in  Russia,  if  it  does  not  express  a 
general  dissatisfaction  with  the  present  division  into 
scientists,  scientific  engineers,  and  workers?  Listen 
to  those  who  know  industry,  and  you  will  see  that 
the  substance  of  their  complaints  is  this :  "  The  worker 
whose  task  has  been  specialised  by  the  permanent 
division  of  labour  has  lost  the  intellectual  interest  in 
his  labour,  and  it  is  especially  so  in  the  great  industries : 
he  has  lost  his  inventive  powers.  Formerly,  he  in- 
vented very  much.  Manual  workers — not  men  of  sci- 
ence nor  trained  engineers — ^have  invented,  or  brought 
to  perfection,  the  prime  motors  and  all  that  mass  of 
machinery  which  has  revolutionised  industry  for  the 
last  hundred  years.  But  since  the  great  factory  has 
been  enthroned,  the  worker,  depressed  by  the  monotony 
of  his  work,  invents  no  more.  What  can  a  weavev: 
invent  who  merely  supervises  four  looms,  without  know- 
ing anything  either  about  their  complicated  movements 
or  how  the  machines  grew  to  be  what  they  are  ?     What 


BRAIN    WORK   AND   MANUAL   WORK.  18/ 

can  a  man  invent  who  is  condemned  for  life  to  bind 
together  the  ends  of  two  threads  with  the  greatest 
celerity,  and  knows  nothing  beyond  making  a  knot? 

"  At  the  outset  of  modern  industry,  three  genera- 
tions of  workers  have  invented ;  now  they  cease  to  do 
so.  As  to  the  inventions  of  the  engineers,  specially 
trained  for  devising  machines,  they  are  either  devoid 
of  genius  or  not  practical  enough.  Those  '  nearly  to 
nothings,*  of  which  Sir  Frederick  Bramwell  spoke  once 
at  Bath,  are  missing  in  their  inventions — those  nothings 
which  can  be  learned  in  the  workshop  only,  and  which 
permitted  a  Murdoch  and  the  Soho  workers  to  make 
a  practical  engine  of  Watt's  schemes.  None  but  he 
who  knows  the  machine — not  in  its  drawings  and 
models  only,  but  in  its  breathing  and  throbbings — who 
unconsciously  thinks  of  it  while  standing  by  it,  can  really 
improve  it.  Smeaton  and  Newcomen  surely  were  ex- 
cellent engineers ;  but  in  their  engines  a  boy  had  to 
open  the  steam  valve  at  each  stroke  of  the  piston ;  and 
it  was  one  of  those  boys  who  once  managed  to  connect 
the  valve  with  the  remainder  of  the  machine,  so  as  to 
make  it  open  automatically,  while  he  ran  away  to  play 
with  other  boys.  But  in  the  modern  machinery  there 
is  no  room  left  for  naive  improvements  of  that  kind 
Scientific  education  on  a  wide  scale  has  become  neces- 
sary for  further  inventions,  and  that  education  is  refused 
to  the  workers.  So  that  there  is  no  issue  out  of  the 
difficulty  unless  scientific  education  and  handicraft  are 
combined  together — unless  integration  of  knowledge 
takes  the  place  of  the  present  divisions."  Such  is  the 
real  substance  of  the  present  movement  in  favour  of 
technical  education.  But,  instead  of  bringing  to  public 
consciousness  the,  perhaps,  unconscious  motives  of  the 
present  discontent,  instead  of  widening  the  views  of  the 
discontented  and  discussing  the  problem  to  its  full  ex- 
tent, the  mouth-pieces  of  the  movement  do  not  mostly 
rise  above  the  shopkeeper's  view  of  the  question.     Some 


1 88  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

of  them  indulge  in  jingo  talk  about  crushing  all  foreign 
industries  out  of  competition,  while  the  others  see  in 
technical  education  nothing  but  a  means  of  somewhat 
improving  the  flesh-machine  of  the  factory  and  of  trans- 
ferring a  few  workers  into  the  upper  class  of  trained 
engineers. 

Such  an  ideal  may  satisfy  them,  but  it  cannot  satisfy 
those  who  keep  in  view  the  combined  interests  of  sci- 
ence and  industry,  and  consider  both  as  a  means  for 
raising  humanity  to  a  higher  level  We  maintain  that 
in  the  interests  of  both  science  and  industry,  as  well 
as  of  society  as  a  whole,  every  human  being,  without 
distinction  of  birth,  ought  to  receive  such  an  education 
as  would  enable  him,  or  her,  to  combine  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  science  with  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
handicraft  We  fully  recognise  the  necessity  of 
specialisation  of  knowledge,  but  we  maintain  that  special- 
isation must  follow  general  education,  and  that  general 
education  must  be  given  in  science  and  handicraft  alike. 
To  the  division  of  society  into  brain-workers  and  manual 
workers  we  oppose  the  combination  of  both  kinds  of 
activities ;  and  instead  of  "  technical  education,"  which 
means  the  maintenance  of  the  present  division  between 
brain  work  and  manual  work,  we  advocate  the  education 
integraUy  or  complete  education,  which  means  the  dis- 
appearance of  that  pernicious  distinction.  Plainly 
stated,  the  aims  of  the  school  under  this  system  ought 
to  be  the  following :  To  give  such  an  education  that,  on 
leaving  school  at  the  age  of  eighteen  or  twenty,  each 
boy  and  each  girl  should  be  endowed  with  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  science — such  a  knowledge  as  might  enable 
them  to  be  useful  workers  in  science — and,  at  the  same 
time,  to  give  them  a  general  knowledge  of  what  con- 
stitutes the  bases  of  technical  training,  and  such  a  skill 
in  some  special  trade  as  would  enable  each  of  them  to 
take  his  or  her  place  in  the  grand  world  of  the  manual 
production  of  wealth.     I  know  that  many  will  find  that 


BRAIN    WORK  AND   MANUAL  WORK.  1 89 

aim  too  large,  or  even  impossible  to  attain,  but  I  hope 
that  if  they  have  the  patience  to  read  the  following  pages, 
they  will  see  that  we  require  nothing  beyond  what  can 
be  easily  attained.  In  fact,  it  has  been  attained ;  and 
what  has  been  done  on  a  small  scale  could  be  done  on  a 
wider  scale,  were  it  not  for  the  economical  and  social 
causes  which  prevent  any  serious  reform  from  being 
accomplished  in  our  miserably  organised  society. 

The  experiment  has  been  made  at  the  Moscow  Tech- 
nical School  for  twenty  consecutive  years  with  many 
hundreds  of  boys ;  and,  according  to  the  testimonies  of 
the  most  competent  judges  at  the  exhibitions  of  Brussels, 
Philadelphia,  Vienna,  and  Paris,  the  experiment  has  been  a 
success.  The  Moscow  school  admits  boys  not  older  than 
fifteen,  and  it  requires  from  boys  of  that  age  nothing 
but  a  substantial  knowledge  of  geometry  and  algebra, 
together  with  the  usual  knowledge  of  their  mother 
tongue ;  younger  pupils  are  received  in  the  preparatory 
classes.  The  school  is  divided  into  two  sections — the 
mechanical  and  the  chemical ;  but  as  I  personally  know 
better  the  former,  and  as  it  is  also  the  more  important 
with  reference  to  the  question  before  us,  so  I  shall  limit 
my  remarks  to  the  education  given  in  the  mechanical 
section.  After  a  five  or  six  years'  stay  at  the  school,  the 
students. leave  it  with  a, thorough  knowledge  of  higher 
mathematics,  physics,  mechanics,  and  connected  sciences 
— so  thorough,  indeed,  that  it  is  not  second  to  that  ac- 
quired in  the  best  mathematical  faculties  of  the  most 
eminent  European  universities.  When  myself  a  student 
of  the  mathematical  faculty  of  the  St.  Petersburg  Uni- 
versity, I  had  the  opportunity  of  comparing  the  know- 
ledge of  the  students  at  the  Moscow  Technical  School 
with  our  own.  I  saw  the  courses  of  higher  geometry 
some  of  them  had  compiled  for  the  use  of  their  com- 
rades ;  I  admired  the  facility  with  which  they  applied  the 
integral  calculus  to  dynamical  problems,  and  I  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  while  we,  University  students,  had 


I90  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS 

more  knowledge  of  a  general  character  (for  instance, 
in  mathematical  astronomy),  they,  the  students  of  the 
Technical  School,  were  much  more  advanced  in  higher 
geometry,  and  especially  in  the  applications  of  higher 
mathematics  to  the  most  intricate  problems  of  dyna- 
mics, the  theories  of  heat  and  elasticity.  But  while  we, 
the  students  of  the  University,  hardly  knew  the  use  of 
our  hands,  the  students  of  the  Technical  School  fabri- 
cated with  their  own  hands,  and  without  the  help  of 
professional  workmen,  fine  steam-engines,  from  the 
heavy  boiler  to  the  last  finely  turned  screw,  agricultural 
machinery,  and  scientific  apparatus — all  for  the  trade 
— and  they  received  the  highest  awards  for  the  work 
of  their  hands  at  the  international  exhibitions.  They 
were  scientifically  educated  skilled  workers — ^workers 
with  university  education — highly  appreciated  even  by 
the  Russian  manufacturers  who  so  much  distrust 
science. 

Now,  the  methods  by  which  these  wonderful  results 
were  achieved  were  these :  In  science,  learning  from 
memory  was  not  in  honour,  while  independent  research 
was  favoured  by  all  means.  Science  was  taught  hand 
in  hand  with  its  applications,  and  what  was  learned  in 
the  schoolroom  was  applied  in  the  workshop.  Great 
attention  was  paid  to  the  highest  abstractions  of 
geometry  as  a  means  for  developing  imagination  and 
research.  As  to  the  teaching  of  handicraft,  the  methods 
were  quite  different  from  those  which  proved  a  failure 
at  the  Cornell  University,  and  differed,  in  fact,  from 
those  used  in  most  technical  schools.  The  student  was 
not  sent  to  a  workshop  to  learn  some  special  handicraft 
and  to  earn  his  existence  as  soon  as  possible,  but  the 
teaching  of  technical  skill  was  prosecuted — according  to 
a  scheme  elaborated  by  the  founder  of  the  school,  M. 
Dellavos,  and  now  applied  also  at  Chicago  and  Boston 
— in  the  same  systematical  way  as  laboratory  work  is 
taught  in  the  universities.     It  is  evident  that  drawing 


BRAIN    WORK    AND   MANUAL   WORK.  I9I 

was  considered  as  the  first  step  in  technical  educatioa 
Then  the  student  was  brought,  first,  to  the  carpenter's 
workshop,  or  rather  laboratory,  and  there  he  was 
thoroughly  taught  to  execute  all  kinds  of  carpentry 
and  joinery.  No  efforts  were  spared  in  order  to  bring 
the  pupil  to  a  certain  perfection  in  that  branch — the  real 
basis  of  all  trades.  Later  on,  he  was  transferred  to  the 
turner's  workshop,  where  he  was  taught  to  make  in 
wood  the  patterns  of  those  things  which  he  would  have 
to  make  in  metal  in  the  following  workshops.  The 
foundry  followed,  and  there  he  was  taught  to  cast  those 
parts  of  machines  which  he  had  prepared  in  wood ;  and 
it  was  only  after  he  had  gone  through  the  first  three 
stages  that  he  was  admitted  to  the  smith's  and  engineer- 
ing workshops.  Such  was  the  system  which  English 
readers  will  find  described  in  full  in  a  work  by  Mr.  Ch. 
H.  Ham.*  As  for  the  perfection  of  the  mechanical 
work  of  the  students,  I  cannot  do  better  than  refer  to  the 
reports  of  the  juries  at  the  above-named  exhibitions. 

In  America  the  same  system  has  been  introduced, 
in  its  technical  part,  first,  in  the  Chicago  Manual  Train- 
ing School,  and  later  on  in  the  Boston  Technical  School 
— the  best,  I  am  told,  of  the  sort;  and  in  this  country, 
or  rather  in  Scotland,  I  found  the  system  applied  with 
full  success,  for  some  years,  under  the  direction  of  Dr. 
Ogilvie  at  Gordon's  College  in  Aberdeen.  It  is  the 
Moscow  or  Chicago  system  on  a  limited  scale.  While 
receiving  substantial  scientific  education,  the  pupils  are 
also  trained  in  the  workshops — but  not  for  one  special 
trade,  as  it  unhappily  too  often  is  the  case.  They  pass 
through  the  carpenter's  workshop,  the  casting  in  metals, 
and  the  engineering  workshop;    and  in  each  of  these 

*  Manual  Training :  the  Solution  of  Social  and  Industrial  ProhUms. 
By  Ch.  H.  Ham.  London :  Blackie  &  Son,  1886.  I  can  add  that  like 
results  have  been  achieved  again  at  the  Krasnoufimsk  Realschule,  in  the 
province  of  Orenburg,  especially  with  regard  to  agriculture  and  agri- 
cultural machinery.  The  achievements  of  the  school,  however,  are  so 
interesting  that  they  deserve  more  than  a  short  mention. 


192  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND    WORKSHOPS. 

they  learn  the  foundations  of  each  of  the  three  trades 
sufficiently  well  for  supplying  the  school  itself  with 
a  number  of  useful  things.  Besides,  as  far  as  I  could 
ascertain  from  what  I  saw  in  the  geographical  and 
physical  classes,  as  also  in  the  chemical  laboratory,  the 
system  of  "through  the  hand  to  the  brain,"  and  vice 
versa,  is  in  full  swing,  and  it  is  attended  with  the  best 
success.  The  boys  work  with  the  physical  instruments, 
and  they  study  geography  in  the  field,  instruments  in 
hands,  as  well  as  in  the  class-room.  Some  of  their 
surveys  filled  my  heart,  as  an  old  geographer,  with  joy. 
It  is  evident  that  the  Gordon's  College  industrial  de- 
partment is  not  a  mere  copy  of  any  foreign  school ;  on 
the  contrary,  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  if  Aberdeen 
has  made  that  excellent  move  towards  combining  science 
with  handicraft,  the  move  was  a  natural  outcome  of  what 
has  been  practised  long  since,  on  a  smaller  scale,  in  the 
Aberdeen  daily  schools. 

The  Moscow  Technical  School  surely  is  not  an  ideal 
school*  It  totally  neglects  the  humanitarian  education 
of  the  young  men.  But  we  must  recognise  that  the 
Moscow  experiment — not  to  speak  of  hundreds  of  other 
partial  experiments — has  perfectly  well  proved  the  pos- 
sibility of  combining  a  scientific  education  of  a  very  high 
standard  with  the  education  which  is  necessary  for  be- 
coming an  excellent  skilled  labourer.  It  has  proved, 
moreover,  that  the  best  means  for  producing  really  good 
skilled  labourers  is  to  seize  the  bull  by  the  horns,  and 
to  grasp  the  educational  problem  in  its  great  features, 
instead  of  trying  to  give  some  special  skill  in  some 
handicraft,  together  with  a  few  scraps  of  knowledge  in 
a  certain  branch  of  some  science.  And  it  has  shown 
also  what  can  be  obtained,  without  over-pressure,  if  a 


♦What  this  school  is  now,  I  don't  know.  In  the  last  years  of 
Alexander  II. 's  reign  it  was  wrecked,  like  so  many  other  good  institu- 
tions of  the  early  part  of  his  reign.  But  the  system  was  not  lost.  It  was 
carried  over  to  America. 


BRAIN   WORK  AND   MANUAL  WORK.  I93 

rational  economy  of  the  scholar's  time  is  always  kept 
in  view,  and  theory  goes  hand  in  hand  with  practice. 
Viewed  in  this  light,  the  Moscow  results  do  not  seem 
extraordinary  at  all,  and  still  better  results  may  be 
expected  if  the  same  principles  are  applied  from  the 
earliest  years  of  education.  Waste  of  time  is  the  leading 
feature  of  our  present  education.  Not  only  are  we 
taught  a  mass  of  rubbish,  but  what  is  not  rubbish  is 
taught  so  as  to  make  us  waste  over  it  as  much  time  as 
possible.  Our  present  methods  of  teaching  originate 
from  a  time  when  the  accomplishments  required  from 
an  educated  person  were  extremely  limited ;  and  they 
have  been  maintained,  notwithstanding  the  immense 
increase  of  knowledge  which  must  be  conveyed  to  the 
scholar's  mind  since  science  has  so  much  widened  its 
former  limits.  Hence  the  over-pressure  in  schools,  and 
hence,  also,  the  urgent  necessity  of  totally  revising 
both  the  subjects  and  the  methods  of  teaching,  accor- 
ding to  the  new  wants  and  to  the  examples  already 
given  here  and  there,  by  separate  schools  and  separate 
teachers. 

It  is  evident  that  the  years  ^of  childhood  ought  not 
to  be  spent  so  uselessly  as  they  are  now.  German 
teachers  have  shown  how  the  very  plays  of  children 
can  be  made  instrumental  in  conveying  to  the  childish 
mind  some  concrete  knowledge  in  both  geometry  and 
mathematics.  The  children  who  have  made  the  squares 
of  the  theorem  of  Pythagoras  out  of  pieces  of  coloured 
cardboard,  will  not  look  at  the  theorem,  when  it  comes 
in  geometry,  as  on  a  mere  instrument  of  torture  devised 
by  the  teachers ;  and  the  less  so  if  they  apply  it  as  the 
carpenters  do.  Complicated  problems  of  arithmetic, 
which  so  much  harassed  us  in  our  boyhood,  are  easily 
solved  by  children  seven  and  eight  years  old  if  they  are 
put  in  the  shape  of  interesting  puzzles.  And  if  the 
Kindergarten — German  teachers  often  make  of  it  a 
kind  of  barrack  in  which  each  movement  of  the  child 

13 


194  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

is  regulated  beforehand — has  often  become  a  small 
prison  for  the  little  ones,  the  idea  which  presided  at  its 
foundation  is  nevertheless  true.  In  fact,  it  is  almost  im- 
possible to  imagine,  without  having  tried  it,  how  many 
sound  notions  of  nature,  habits  of  classification,  and 
taste  for  natural  sciences  can  be  conveyed  to  the 
children's  minds ;  and,  if  a  series  of  concentric 
courses  adapted  to  the  various  phases  of  develop- 
ment of  the  human  being  were  generally  accepted 
in  education,  the  first  series  in  all  sciences,  save  soci- 
ology, could  be  taught  before  the  age  of  ten  or  twelve, 
so  as  to  give  a  general  idea  of  the  universe,  the  earth 
and  its  inhabitants,  the  chief  physical,  chemical,  zoologi- 
cal, and  botanical  phenomena,  leaving  the  discovery  of 
the  laws  of  those  phenomena  to  the  next  series  of  deeper 
and  more  speciahsed  studies.  On  the  other  side,  we  all 
know  how  children  like  to  make  toys  themselves,  how 
they  gladly  imitate  the  work  of  full-grown  people  if 
they  see  them  at  work  in  the  workshop  or  the  building- 
yard.  But  the  parents  either  stupidly  paralyse  that 
passion,  or  do  not  know  how  to  utilise  it.  Most  of  them 
despise  manual  work  and  prefer  sending  their  children 
to  the  study  of  Roman  history,  or  of  Franklin's  teach- 
ings about  saving  money,  to  seeing  them  at  a  work 
which  is  good  for  the  "  lower  classes  only ".  They 
thus  do  their  best  to  render  subsequent  learning  the  more 
difficult. 

And  then  come  the  school  years,  and  time  is  wasted 
again  to  an  incredible  extent.  Take,  for  instance, 
mathematics,  which  every  one  ought  to  know,  because 
it  is  the  basis  of  all  subsequent  education,  and  which  so 
few  really  learn  in  our  schools.  In  geometry,  time  is 
foolishly  wasted  by  using  a  method  which  merely  con- 
sists in  committing  geometry  to  memory.  In  most  cases, 
the  boy  reads  again  and  again  the  proof  of  a  theorem 
till  his  memory  has  retained  the  succession  of  reasonings. 
Therefore,  nine  boys  out  of  ten,  if  asked  to  prove  an 


BRAIN    WORK   AND   MANUAL  WORK.  I95 

elementary  theorem  two  years  after  having  left  the 
school,  will  be  unable  to  do  it,  unless  mathematics  is 
their  speciality.  They  will  forget  which  auxiliary  lines 
to  draw,  and  they  never  have  been  taught  to  discover 
the  proofs  by  themselves.  No  wonder  that  later  on 
they  find  such  difficulties  in  applying  geometry  to  phy- 
sics, that  their  progress  is  despairingly  sluggish,  and 
that  so  few  master  higher  mathematics.  There  is,  how- 
ever, the  other  method  which  permits  progress,  as  a 
whole,  at  a  much  speedier  rate,  and  under  which  he 
who  once  has  learned  geometry  will  know  it  all  his 
life  long.  Under  this  system,  each  theorem  is  put  as 
a  problem ;  its  solution  is  never  given  beforehand, 
and  the  pupil  is  induced  to  find  it  by  himself.  Thus, 
if  some  preliminary  exercises  with  the  rule  and  the 
compass  have  been  made,  there  is  not  one  boy  or  girl, 
out  of  twenty  or  more,  who  will  not  be  able  to  find  the 
means  of  drawing  an  angle  which  is  equal  to  a  given 
angle,  and  to  prove  their  equality,  after  a  few  sugges- 
tions from  the  teacher ;  and  if  the  subsequent  problems 
are  given  in  a  systematic  succession  (there  are  excel- 
lent text-books  for  the  purpose),  and  the  teacher  does 
not  press  his  pupils  to  go  faster  than  they  can  go  at  the 
beginning,  they  advance  from  one  problem  to  the  next 
with  an  astonishing  facility,  the  only  difficulty  being 
to  bring  the  pupil  to  solve  the  first  problem,  and  thus 
to  acquire  confidence  in  his  own  reasoning. 

Moreover,  each  abstract  geometrical  truth  must  be 
impressed  on  the  mind  in  its  concrete  form  as  well.  As 
soon  as  the  pupils  have  solved  a  few  problems  on  paper, 
they  must  solve  them  in  the  playing-ground  with  a  few 
sticks  and  a  string,  and  they  must  apply  their  knowledge 
in  the  workshop.  Only  then  will  the  geometrical  lines 
acquire  a  concrete  meaning  in  the  children's  minds ; 
only  then  will  they  see  that  the  teacher  is  playing  no 
tricks  when  he  asks  them  to  solve  problems  with  the 
rule  and  the  compass  without  resorting  to  the  protractor  ; 


196  FIELDS,  FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

only  then  will  they  know  geometry.  "Through  the 
eyes  and  the  hand  to  the  brain  " — that  is  the  true  prin- 
ciple of  economy  of  time  in  teaching.  I  remember  as  if 
it  were  yesterday,  how  geometry  suddenly  acquired  for 
me  a  new  meaning,  and  how  this  new  meaning  facili- 
tated all  ulterior  studies.  It  was  as  we  were  mastering 
a  Montgolfier  balloon,  and  I  remarked  that  the  angles  at 
the  summits  of  each  of  the  twenty  strips  of  paper  out 
of  which  the  balloon  was  going  to  be  made  must  cover 
less  than  the  fifth  part  of  a  right  angle  each.  I  remem- 
ber, next,  how  the  sinuses  and  the  tangents  ceased  to 
be  mere  cabalistic  signs  when  they  permitted  us  to  cal- 
culate the  length  of  a  stick  in  a  working  profile  of  a 
fortification ;  and  how  geometry  in  space  became  plain 
when  we  began  to  make  on  a  small  scale  a  bastion  with 
embrasures  and  barbettes — an  occupation  which  ob- 
viously was  soon  prohibited  on  account  of  the  state  into 
which  we  brought  our  clothes.  "  You  look  like  navvies," 
was  the  reproach  addressed  to  us  by  our  intelligent 
educators,  while  we  were  proud  precisely  of  being 
navvies,  and  of  discovering  the  use  of  geometry. 

By  compelling  our  children  to  study  real  things  from 
mere  graphical  representations,  instead  of  making  those 
things  themselves,  we  compel  them  to  waste  the  most 
precious  time ;  we  uselessly  worry  their  minds ;  we 
accustom  them  to  the  worst  methods  of  learning ;  we 
kill  independent  thought  in  the  bud ;  and  very  seldom 
we  succeed  in  conveying  a  real  knowledge  of  what  we 
are  teaching.  Superficiality,  parrot-like  repetition,  slav- 
ishness  and  inertia  of  mind  are  the  results  of  our  method 
of  education.  We  do  not  teach  our  children  how  to 
learn.  The  very  beginnings  of  science  are  taught  on 
the  same  pernicious  system.  In  most  schools  even 
arithmetic  is  taught  in  the  abstract  way,  and  mere  rules 
are  -stuffed  into  the  poor  little  heads.  The  idea  of  a 
unit,  which  is  arbitrary  and  can  be  changed  at  will  in 
our  measurement  (the  match,  the  box  of  matches,  the 


BRAIN    WORK   AND   MANUAL   WORK.  I97 

dozen  of  boxes,  or  the  gross ;  the  metre,  the  centimetre, 
the  kilometre,  and  so  on),  is  not  impressed  on  the  mind, 
and  therefore,  when  the  children  come  to  the  decimal 
fractions  they  are  at  a  loss  to  understand  them ;  whereas 
in  France,  where  the  decimal  system  of  measures  and 
money  is  a  matter  of  daily  life,  even  those  workers  who 
have  received  the  plainest  elementary  education  are 
quite  familiar  with  decinlals.  To  represent  twenty-five 
centimes  or  twenty-five  centimetres,  they  write  "  zero 
twenty-five,"  while  most  of  my  readers  surely  remember 
how  this  same  zero  at  the  head  of  a  row  of  figures 
puzzled  them  in  their  boyhood.  We  do  also  what  we 
can  to  render  algebra  unintelligible,  and  our  children 
spend  one  year  before  they  have  learned  what  is  not 
algebra  at  all,  but  a  mere  system  of  abbreviations,  which 
can  be  learned  by  the  way  if  it  is  taught  together  with 
arithmetic. 

The  waste  of  time  in  physics  is  simply  revolting. 
While  young  people  very  easily  understand  the  prin- 
ciples of  chemistry  and  its  formulae,  as  soon  as  they 
themselves  make  the  first  experiments  with  a  few  glasses 
and  tubes,  they  mostly  find  the  greatest  difficulties  in 
grasping  the  mechanical  introduction  into  physics, 
partly  because  they  do  not  know  geometry,  and  especi- 
ally, because  they  are  merely  shown  costly  machines 
instead  of  being  induced  to  make  themselves  plain 
apparatus  for  illustrating  the  phenomena  they  study. 
Instead  of  learning  the  laws  of  force  with  plain  instru- 
ments which  a  boy  of  fifteen  can  easily  make,  they  learn 
them  from  mere  drawings,  in  a  purely  abstract  fashion. 
Instead  of  making  themselves  an  Atwood's  machine 
with  a  broomstick  and  the  wheel  of  an  old  clock,  or 
verifying  the  laws  of  falling  bodies  with  a  key  gliding  on 
an  inclined  string,  they  are  shown  a  complicated  appara- 
tus, and  in  most  cases  the  teacher  himself  does  not  know 
how  to  explain  to  them  the  principle  of  the  apparatus, 
and  indulges  in  irrelevant  details.     And  so  it  goes  on 


198  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  with  but  a  few  honour- 
able exceptions.* 

If  waste  of  time  is  characteristic  of  our  methods  of 
teaching  science,  it  is  characteristic  as  well  of  the  methods 
used  for  teaching  handicraft  We  know  how  years  are 
wasted  when  a  boy  serves  his  apprenticeship  in  a  work- 
shop;  but  the  same  reproach  can  be  addressed,  to  a 
great  extent,  to  those  technical  schools  which  endeavour 
at  once  to  teach  some  special  handicraft,  instead  of 
resorting  to  the  broader  and  surer  methods  of  syste- 
matical teaching.  Just  as  there  are  in  science  some 
notions  and  methods  which  are  preparatory  to  the  study 
of  all  sciences,  so  there  are  also  some  fundamental 
notions  and  methods  preparatory  to  the  special  study 
of  any  handicraft  Reuleaux  has  shown  in  that  delight- 
ful book,  the  Theoretische  Kinematik,  that  there  is,  so 
to  say,  a  philosophy  of  all  possible  machinery.  Each 
machine,  however  complicated,  can  be  reduced  to  a  few 
elements — ^plates,  cylinders,  discs,  cones,  and  so  on — as 
well  as  to  a  few  tools — chisels,  saws,  rollers,  hammers, 

*  Take,  for  instance,  the  description  of  Atwood's  machine  in  any 
course  of  elementary  physics.  You  will  find  very  great  attention  paid  to 
the  wheels  on  which  the  axle  of  the  pulley  is  made  to  lie ;  hollow  boxes, 
plates  and  rings,  the  clock,  and  other  accessories  will  be  mentioned  before 
one  word  is  said  upon  the  leading  idea  of  the  machine,  which  is  to  slacken 
the  motion  of  a  falling  body  by  making  a  falling  body  of  small  weight 
move  a  heavier  body  which  is  in  the  state  of  inertia,  gravity  acting  on  it 
in  two  opposite  directions.  That  was  the  inventor's  idea ;  and  if  it  is 
made  clear  the  pupils  see  at  once  that  to  suspend  two  bodies  of  equal 
weight  over  a  pulley,  and  to  make  them  move  by  adding  a  small  weight 
to  one  of  them,  is  one  of  the  means  (and  a  good  one)  for  slackening  the 
motion  during  the  falling ;  they  see  that  the  friction  of  the  pulley  must  be 
reduced  to  a  minimum,  either  by  using  the  two  pairs  of  wheels,  which  so 
much  puzzle  the  text-book  makers,  or  by  any  other  means  ;  that  the  clock 
is  a  luxury,  and  the  "  plates  and  rings  "  are  mere  accessories :  in  short, 
that  Atwood's  idea  can  be  reaHsed  with  the  wheel  of  a  clock  fastened,  as 
a  pulley,  to  a  wall,  or  on  the  top  of  a  broomstick  secured  in  a  vertical 
position.  In  this  case  the  pupils  will  understand  the  idea  of  the  machine 
and  of  its  inventor,  and  they  will  accustom  themselves  to  separate  the 
leading  idea  from  the  accessories ;  while  in  the  other  case  they  merely 
look  with  curiosity  at  the  tricks  performed  by  the  teacher  with  a  compli- 
cated machine,  and  the  few  who  finally  understand  it  spend  a  quantity  of 
time  in  the  effort.  In  reality,  all  apparatus  used  to  illustrate  the  funda- 
mental laws  of  physics  ought  to  be  made  by  the  children  themselves. 


BRAIN    WORK  AND   MANUAL   WORK.  1 99 

etc. ;  and,  however  complicated  its  movements,  they  can 
be  decomposed  into  a  few  modifications  of  motion,  such 
as  the  transformation  of  circular  motion  into  a  rec- 
tilinear, and  the  like,  with  a  number  of  intermediate 
links.  So  also  each  handicraft  can  be  decomposed  into  a 
number  of  elements.  In  each  trade  one  must  know  how 
to  make  a  plate  with  parallel  surfaces,  a  cylinder,  a  disc, 
a  square,  and  a  round  hole ;  how  to  manage  a  Hmited 
number  of  tools,  all  tools  being  mere  modifications  of 
less  than  a  dozen  types ;  and  how  to  transform  one  kind 
of  motion  into  another.  This  is  the  foundation  of  all 
mechanical  handicrafts;  so  that  the  knowledge  of  how 
to  make  in  wood  those  primary  elements,  how  to  manage 
the  chief  tools  in  wood-work,  and  how  to  transform 
various  kinds  of  motion,  ought  to  be  considered  as 
the  very  basis  for  the  subsequent  teaching  of  all  pos- 
sible kinds  of  mechanical  handicraft  The  pupil  who  has 
acquired  that  skill  already  knows  one  good  half  of  all 
possible  trades.  Besides,  none  can  be  a  good  worker  in 
science  unless  he  is  in  possession  of  good  methods  of 
scientific  research ;  unless  he  has  learned  to  observe,  to 
describe  with  exactitude,  to  discover  mutual  relations 
between  facts  seemingly  disconnected,  to  make  hypo- 
theses and  to  verify  them,  to  reason  upon  cause  and 
effect,  and  so  on.  And  none  can  be  a  good  manual 
worker  unless  he  has  been  accustomed  to  the  good 
methods  of  handicraft  altogether.  He  must  grow  ac- 
customed to  conceive  the  subject  of  his  thoughts  in  a 
concrete  form,  to  draw  it,  or  to  model,  to  hate  badly  kept 
tools  and  bad  methods  of  work,  to  give  to  everything  a 
fine  touch  of  finish,  to  derive  artistic  enjoyment  from 
the  contemplation  of  gracious  forms  and  combinations 
of  colours,  and  dissatisfaction  from  what  is  ugly.  Be  it 
handicraft,  science,  or  art,  the  chief  aim  of  the  school 
is  not  to  make  a  specialist  from  a  beginner,  but  to  teach 
him  the  elements  of  knowledge  and  the  good  methods 
of  work,  and,  above  all,  to  give  him  that  general  in- 


2O0  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

spiiation  which  will  induce  him,  later  on,  to  put  in  what- 
ever he  does  a  sincere  longing  for  truth,  to  like  what  is 
beautiful  both  as  to  form  and  contents,  to  feel  the  neces- 
sity of  being  a  useful  unit  amidst  other  human  units,  and 
thus  to  feel  his  heart  at  unison  with  the  rest  of  humanity. 

As  for  avoiding  the  monotony  of  work  which  would 
result  from  the  pupil  always  making  mere  cylinders  and 
discs,  and  never  making  full  machines  or  other  useful 
things,  there  are  thousands  of  means  for  avoiding  that 
want  of  interest,  and  one  of  them,  in  use  at  Moscow, 
is  worthy  of  notice.  It  is  not  to  give  work  for  mere 
exercise,  but  to  utilise  everything  which  the  pupil  makes, 
from  his  very  first  steps.  Do  you  remember  how  you 
were  delighted,  in  your  childhood,  if  your  work  was 
utilised,  be  it  only  as  a  part  of  something  useful  ?  So  they 
do  at  Moscow.  Each  plank  planed  by  the  pupils  is  uti- 
lised as  a  part  of  some  machine  in  some  of  the  other 
workshops.  When  a  pupil  comes  to  the  engineering 
workshop,  and  he  is  set  to  make  a  quadrangular  block  of 
iron  with  parallel  and  perpendicular  surfaces,  the  block 
has  an  interest  in  his  eyes,  because,  when  he  has  finished 
it,  verified  its  angles  and  surfaces,  and  corrected  its  de- 
fects the  block  is  not  thrown  under  the  bench — it  is 
given  to  a  more  advanced  pupil,  who  makes  a  handle  to 
it,  paints  the  whole,  and  sends  it  to  the  shop  of  the  school 
as  a  paper-weight  The  systematical  teaching  thus  re- 
ceives the  necessary  attractiveness.* 

It  is  evident  that  celerity  of  work  is  a  most  impor- 
tant factor  in  production.  So  it  might  be  asked  if, 
under  the  above  system,  the  necessary  speed  of  work 
could  be  obtained.  But  there  are  two  kinds  of  celerity. 
There  is  the  celerity  which  I  saw  in  a  Nottingham  lace- 

*  The  sale  of  the  pupils'  work  is  not  insignificant,  especially  when 
they  reach  the  higher  classes,  and  make  steam-engines.  Therefore  the 
Moscow  school,  when  I  knew  it,  was  one  of  the  cheapest  in  the  world. 
It  gave  boarding  and  education  at  a  very  low  fee.  But  imagine  such  a 
school  connected  with  a  farm  school,  which  grows  food  and  exchanges  it 
at  its  cost  price.     What  will  be  the  cost  of  education  then  ? 


BRAIN   WORK  ANt>   MANUAL   WORK.  201 

factory ;  full-grown  men,  with  shivering  hands  and  heads, 
are  feverishly  binding  together  the  ends  of  two  threads 
from  the  remnants  of  cotton-yarn  in  the  bobbins ;  you 
hardly  can  follow  their  movements.  But  the  very  fact 
of  requiring  such  kind  of  rapid  work  is  the  condemnation 
of  the  factory  system.  What  has  remained  of  the 
human  being  in  those  shivering  bodies  ?  What  will  be 
their  outcome  ?  Why  this  waste  of  human  force,  when  it 
could  produce  ten  times  the  value  of  the  odd  rests  of 
yarn.?  This  kind  of  celerity  is  required  exclusively 
because  of  the  cheapness  of  the  factory  slaves ;  so  let 
us  hope  that  no  school  will  ever  aim  at  this  kind  of 
quickness  in  work.  But  there  is  also  the  time-saving 
celerity  of  the  well-trained  worker,  and  this  is  surely 
achieved  best  by  the  kind  of  education  which  we  ad- 
vocate. However  plain  his  work,  the  educated  worker 
makes  it  better  and  quicker  than  the  uneducated.  Ob- 
serve, for  instance,  how  a  good  worker  proceeds  in 
cutting  anything — say  a  piece  of  cardboard — and  com- 
pare his  movements  with  those  of  an  improperly  trained 
worker.  The  latter  seizes  the  cardboard,  takes  the  tool 
as  it  is,  traces  a  line  in  a  haphazard  way,  and  begins  to 
cut ;  half-way  he  is  tired,  and  when  he  has  finished  his 
work  is  worth  nothing ;  whereas,  the  former  will  examine 
his  tool  and  improve  it  if  necessary;  he  will  trace  the 
line  with  exactitude,  secure  both  cardboard  and  rule, 
keep  the  tool  in  the  right  way,  cut  quite  easily,  and 
give  you  a  piece  of  good  work.  That  is  the  true  time- 
saving  celerity,  the  most  appropriate  for  economising 
human  labour;  and  the  best  means  for  attaining  it  is 
an  education  of  the  most  superior  kind.  The  great 
masters  painted  with  an  astonishing  rapidity;  but  their 
rapid  work  was  the  result  of  a  great  development  of  in- 
telligence and  imagination,  of  a  keen  sense  of  beauty, 
of  a  fine  perception  of  colours.  And  that  is  the  kind  of 
rapid  work  of  which  humanity  is  in  need. 

Much  more  ought  to  be  said  as  regards  the  duties 


202  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

of  the  school,  but  I  hasten  to  say  a  few  words  more 
as  to  the  desirabihty  of  the  kind  of  education  briefly 
sketched  in  the  preceding  pages.  Certainly,  I  do  not 
cherish  the  illusion  that  a  thorough  reform  in  education, 
or  in  any  of  the  issues  indicated  in  the  preceding 
chapters,  will  be  made  as  long  as  the  civilised  nations 
remain  under  the  present  narrowly  egotistic  system  of 
production  and  consumption.  All  we  can  expect,  as  long 
as  the  present  conditions  last,  is  to  have  some  micro- 
scopical attempts  at  reforming  here  and  there  on  a  small 
scale — attempts  which  necessarily  will  prove  to  be  far 
below  the  expected  results,  because  of  the  impossibility 
of  reforming  on  a  small  scale  when  so  intimate  a  con- 
nection exists  between  the  manifold  functions  of  a 
civilised  nation.  But  the  energy  of  the  constructive 
genius  of  society  depends  chiefly  upon  the  depths  of  its 
conception  as  to  what  ought  to  be  done,  and  how ;  and 
the  necessity  of  recasting  education  is  one  of  those 
necessities  which  are  most  comprehensible  to  all,  and 
are  most  appropriate  for  inspiring  society  with  those 
ideals,  without  which  stagnation  or  even  decay  are  un- 
avoidable. So  let  us  suppose  that  a  community — a  city, 
or  a  territory  which  has,  at  least,  a  few  millions  of  in- 
habitants— gives  the  above-sketched  education  to  all  its 
children,  without  distinction  of  birth  (and  we  are  rich 
enough  to  permit  us  the  luxury  of  such  an  education), 
without  asking  anything  in  return  from  the  children  but 
what  they  will  give  when  they  have  become  producers 
of  wealth.  Suppose  such  an  education  is  given,  and 
analyse  its  probable  consequences. 

I  will  not  insist  upon  the  increase  of  wealth  which 
would  result  from  having  a  young  army  of  educated 
and  well-trained  producers;  nor  shall  I  insist  upon  the 
social  benefits  which  would  be  derived  from  erasing  the 
present  distinction  between  the  brain  workers  and  the 
manual  workers,  and  from  thus  reaching  the  concord- 
ance of  interest  and  harmony  so  much  wanted  in  our 


BRAIN   WORK  AND   MANUAL  WORK.  203 

times  of  social  struggles.  I  shall  not  dwell  upon  the 
fulness  of  life  which  would  result  for  each  separate  in- 
dividual, if  he  were  enabled  to  enjoy  the  use  of  both 
his  mental  and  bodily  powers ;  nor  upon  the  advantages 
of  raising  manual  labour  to  the  place  of  honour  it  ought 
to  occupy  in  society,  instead  of  being  a  stamp  of  in- 
feriority, as  it  is  now.  Nor  shall  I  insist  upon  the  disap- 
pearance of  the  present  misery  and  degradation,  with  all 
their  consequences — vice,  crime,  prisons,  price  of  blood, 
denunciation,  and  the  like — ^which  necessarily  would 
follow.  In  short,  I  will  not  touch  now  the  great  social 
question,  upon  which  so  much  has  been  written  and  so 
much  remains  to  be  written  yet  I  merely  intend  to 
point  out  in  these  pages  the  benefits  which  science  itself 
would  derive  from  the  change. 

Some  will  say,  of  course,  that  to  reduce  men  of  science 
to  the  rdle  of  manual  workers  would  mean  the  decay 
of  science  and  genius.  But  those  who  will  take  into 
account  the  following  considerations  probably  will  agree 
that  the  result  ought  to  be  the  reverse — namely,  such 
a  revival  of  science  and  art,  and  such  a  progress  in 
industry,  as  we  only  can  faintly  foresee  from  what  we 
know  about  the  times  of  the  Renaissance.  It  has  be- 
come a  commonplace  to  speak  with  emphasis  about  the 
progress  of  science  during  the  nineteenth  century ;  and 
it  is  evident  that  our  century,  if  compared  with  centuries 
past,  has  much  to  be  proud  of.  But,  if  we  take  into 
account  that  most  of  the  problems  which  our  century 
has  solved  already  had  been  indicated,  and  their  solutions 
foreseen,  a  hundred  years  ago,  we  must  admit  that  the 
progress  was  not  so  rapid  as  might  have  been  expected, 
and  that  something  hampered  it.  The  mechanical 
theory  of  heat  was  very  well  foreseen  in  the  last  century 
by  Rumford  and  Humphrey  Davy,  and  even  in  Russia 
it  was  advocated  by  Lomonosoff.*     However,  much  more 

•  In  an  otherwise  also  remarkable  memoir  on  the  Arctic  Regions. 


204  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

than  half  a  century  elapsed  before  the  theory  reappeared 
in  science.  Lamarck,  and  even  Linnaeus,  Geoffroy  Saint- 
Hilaire,  Erasmus  Darwin,  and  several  others  were  fully 
aware  of  the  variability  of  species ;  they  were  opening 
the  way  for  the  construction  of  biology  on  the  principles 
of  variation ;  but  here,  again,  half  a  century  was  wasted 
before  the  variability  of  species  was  brought  again 
to  the  front ;  and  we  all  remember  how  Darwin's  ideas 
were  carried  on  and  forced  on  the  attention  of  university 
people,  chiefly  by  persons  who  were  not  professional 
scientists  themselves ;  and  yet  in  Darwin's  hands  the 
theory  of  evolution  surely  was  narrowed,  owing  to  the 
overwhelming  importance  given  to  only  one  factor  of 
evolution.  For  many  years  past  astronomy  has  been 
needing  a  careful  revision  of  the  Kant  and  Laplace's 
hypothesis ;  but  no  theory  is  yet  forthcoming  which 
would  compel  general  acceptance.  Geology  surely  has 
made  wonderful  progress  in  the  reconstitution  of  the 
palaeontological  record,  but  dynamical  geology  progresses 
at  a  despairingly  slow  rate ;  while  all  future  progress  in 
the  great  question  as  to  the  laws  of  distribution  of  living 
organisms  on  the  surface  oi  the  earth  is  hampered  by 
the  want  of  knowledge  as  to  the  extension  of  glaciation 
during  the  Quaternary  epoch.*     In  short,  in  each  branch 

•  The  rate  of  progress  in  the  recently  so  popular  Glacial  Period  ques- 
tion was  strikingly  slow.  Already  Venetz  in  1821  and  Esmarck  in  1823 
had  explained  the  erratic  phenomena  by  the  glaciation  of  Europe. 
Agassiz  came  forth  with  the  glaciation  of  the  Alps,  the  Jura  mountains, 
and  Scotland,  about  1840 ;  and  five  years  later,  Guyot  had  published  his 
maps  of  the  routes  followed  by  Alpine  boulders.  But  forty-two  years 
elapsed  after  Venetz  wrote  before  one  geologist  of  mark  (Lyell)  dared 
timidly  to  accept  his  theory,  even  to  a  limited  extent — the  most  interesting 
fact  being  that  Guyot's  maps,  considered  as  irrelevant  in  1845,  were 
recognised  as  conclusive  after  1863.  Even  now — half  a  century  after 
Agassiz's  first  work — Agassiz's  views  are  not  yet  either  refuted  or 
generally  accepted.  So  also  Forbes's  views  upon  the  plasticity  of  ice. 
Let  me  add,  by  the  way,  that  the  whole  polemics  as  to  the  viscosity  of 
ice  is  a  striking  instance  of  how  facts,  scientific  terms,  and  experimental 
methods  quite  familiar  to  building  engineers,  were  ignored  by  those  who 
took  part  in  the  polemics.  If  these  facts,  terms  and  methods  were  taken 
into  account,  the  polemics  would  not  have  raged  for  years  with  no  result. 
Like  instances,  to  show  how  science  suffers  from  a  want  of  acquaintance 


BRAIN    WORK   AND   MANUAL   WORK.  20$ 

of  science  a  revision  of  the  current  theories  as  well  as 
new  wide  generalisations  are  wanted.  And  if  the  re- 
vision requires  some  of  that  inspiration  of  genius  which 
moved  Galileo  and  Newton,  and  which  depends  in  its 
appearance  upon  general  causes  of  human  development, 
it  requires  also  an  increase  in  the  number  of  scientific 
workers.  When  facts  contradictory  to  current  theories 
become  numerous,  the  theories  must  be  revised  (we 
saw  it  in  Darwin's  case),  and  thousands  of  simple  in- 
telligent workers  in  science  are  required  to  accumulate 
them. 

Immense  regions  of  the  earth  still  remain  unexplored  ; 
the  study  of  the  geographical  distribution  of  animals 
and  plants  meets  with  stumbling-blocks  at  every  step. 
Travellers  cross  continents,  and  do  not  know  even  how 
to  determine  the  latitude  nor  how  to  manage  a  barometer. 
Physiology,  both  of  plants  and  animals,  psycho-physi- 
ology, and  the  psychological  faculties  of  man  and  animals 
are  so  many  branches  of  knowledge  requiring  more  data 
of  the  simplest  description.  History  remains  a  fable 
convenue  chiefly  because  it  wants  fresh  ideas,  but  also 
because  it  wants  scientifically  thinking  workers  to  recon- 
stitute the  life  of  past  centuries  in  the  same  way  as 
Thorold  Rogers  or  Augustin  Thierry  have  done  it  for 
separate  epochs.  In  short,  there  is  not  one  single 
science  which  does  not  suffer  in  its  development  from  a 
want  of  men  and  women  endowed  with  a  philosophical 
conception  of  the  universe,  ready  to  apply  their  forces 
of  investigation  in  a  given  field,  however  limited,  and 
having  leisure  for  devoting  themselves  to  scientific  pur- 
suits. In  a  community  such  as  we  suppose,  thousands  of 
workers  would  be  ready  to  answer  any  appeal  for  ex- 
ploration. Darwin  spent  almost  thirty  years  in  gather- 
ing and  analysing  facts  for  the  elaboration  of  the  theory 
of  the  origin  of  species.     Had  he  lived  in  such  a  society 

with  facts,  and  methods  of  experimenting  well  known  to  engineers, 
florists,  cattle-breeders,  and  so  on,  could  be  produced  in  numbers. 


2o6  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

as  we  suppose,  he  simply  would  have  made  an  appeal 
to  volunteers  for  facts  and  partial  exploration,  and 
thousands  of  explorers  would  have  answered  his  appeal. 
Scores  of  societies  would  have  come  to  life  to  debate 
and  to  solve  each  of  the  partial  problems  involved  in  the 
theory,  and  in  ten  years  the  theory  would  have  been 
verified ;  all  those  factors  of  evolution  which  only  now 
begin  to  receive  due  attention  would  have  appeared  in 
their  full  light  The  rate  of  scientific  progress  would 
have  been  tenfold ;  and  if  the  individual  would  not  have 
the  same  claims  on  posterity's  gratitude  as  he  has  now, 
the  unknown  mass  would  have  done  the  work  with  more 
speed  and  with  more  prospect  for  ulterior  advance  than 
the  individual  could  do  in  his  lifetime.  Mr.  Murray's 
dictionary  is  an  illustration  of  that  kind  of  work — the 
work  of  the  future. 

However,  there  is  another  feature  of  modern  science 
which  speaks  more  strongly  yet  in  favour  of  the  change 
we  advocate.  While  industry,  especially  by  the  end  of 
the  last  century  and  during  the  first  part  of  the  present, 
has  been  inventing  on  such  a  scale  as  to  revolutionise 
the  very  face  of  the  earth,  science  has  been  losing  its 
inventive  powers.  Men  of  science  invent  no  more,  or 
very  little.  Is  it  not  striking,  indeed,  that  the  steam- 
engine,  even  in  its  leading  principles,  the  railway-engine, 
the  steamboat,  the  telephone,  the  phonograph,  the 
weaving-machine,  the  lace-machine,  the  lighthouse,  the 
macadamised  road,  photography  in  black  and  in  colours, 
and  thousands  of  less  important  things,  have  not  been 
invented  by  professional  men  of  science,  although  none 
of  them  would  have  refused  to  associate  his  name  with 
any  of  the  above-named  inventions  ?  Men  who  hardly 
had  received  any  education  at  school,  who  had  merely 
picked  up  the  crumbs  of  knowledge  from  the  tables  of 
the  rich,  and  who  made  their  experiments  with  the  most 
primitive  means — the  attorney's  clerk  Smeaton,  the  in- 
strument-maker Watt,  the  brakesman  Stephenson,  the 


BRAIN   WORK  AND   MANUAL   WORK.  20/ 

jeweller's  apprentice  Fulton,  the  millwright  Rennie,  the 
mason  Telford,  and  hundreds  of  others  whose  very 
names  remain  unknown,  were,  as  Mr.  Smiles  justly  says, 
"  the  real  makers  of  modern  civilisation " ;  while  the 
professional  men  of  science,  provided  with  all  means  for 
acquiring  knowledge  and  experimenting,  have  invented 
little  in  the  formidable  array  of  implements,  machines, 
and  prime-motors,  which  has  shown  to  humanity  how  to 
utilise  and  to  manage  the  forces  of  nature.*  The  fact  is 
striking,  but  its  explanation  is  very  simple :  those  men 
— the  Watts  and  the  Stephensons — knew  something 
which  the  savants  do  not  know — they  knew  the  use  of 
their  hands ;  their  surroundings  stimulated  their  in- 
ventive powers;  they  knew  machines,  their  leading 
principles,  and  their  work;  they  had  breathed  the 
atmosphere  of  the  workshop  and  the  building-yard. 

We  know  how  men  of  science  will  meet,  the  reproach. 
They  will  say :  "  We  discover  the  laws  of  nature,  let 
others  apply  them ;  it  is  a  simple  division  of  labour  ". 
But  such  a  rejoinder  would  be  utterly  untrue.  The 
march  of  progress  is  quite  the  reverse,  because  in  a  hun- 
dred cases  against  one  the  mechanical  invention  comes 
before  the  discovery  of  the  scientific  law.  It  was  not 
the  dynamical  theory  of  heat  which  came  before  the 
steam-engine — it  followed  it.  When  thousands  of  en- 
gines already  were  transforming  heat  into  motion  under 
the  eyes  of  hundreds  of  professors,  and  when  they  had 
done  so  for  half  a  century,  or  more ;  when  thousands  of 
trains,  stopped  by  powerful  brakes,  were  disengaging 
heat  and  spreading  sheaves  of  sparks  on  the  rails  at 
their  approach  to  the  stations ;  when  all  over  the  civilised 
world  heavy  hammers  and  perforators  were  rendering 
burning  hot  the   masses  of  iron   they  were   hanmier- 

*  Chemistry  is,  to  a  great  extent,  an  exception  to  the  rule.  Is  it  not 
because  the  chemist  is  to  such  an  extent  a  manual  worker  ?  Besides, 
during  the  last  ten  years  we  see  a  decided  revival  in  scientific  inventive- 
ness, especially  in  physics — that  is,  in  a  branch  in  which  the  engineei 
and  the  man  cf  science  meet  so  much  together., 


208  FIELDS,  FACTORIES  AND    WORKSHOP& 

ing  and  perforating  —  then,  and  then  only,  a  doctor, 
Mayer,  ventured  to  bring  out  the  mechanical  theory  of 
heat  with  all  its  consequences :  and  yet  the  men  of 
science  almost  drove  him  to  madness  by  obstinately 
clinging  to  their  mysterious  caloric  fluid,  and  they  de- 
scribed Joule's  work  on  the  mechanical  equivalent  of 
heat  as  "  unscientific  ". 

When  every  engine  was  illustrating  the  impossibility 
of  utilising  all  the  heat  disengaged  by  a  given  amount 
of  burnt  fuel,  then  came  the  law  of  Clausius.  When  all 
over  the  world  industry  already  was  transforming  motion 
into  heat,  sound,  light,  and  electricity,  and  each  one  into 
each  other,  then  only  came  Grove's  theory  of  the  "  corre- 
lation of  physical  forces ".  It  was  not  the  theory  of 
electricity  which  gave  us  the  telegraph.  When  the  tele- 
graph was  invented,  all  we  knew  about  electricity  was 
but  a  few  facts  more  or  less  badly  arranged  in  our  books  ; 
the  theory  of  electricity  is  not  ready  yet;  it  still  waits 
for  its  Newton,  notwithstanding  the  brilliant  attempts 
of  late  years.  Even  the  empirical  knowledge  of  the  laws 
of  electrical  currents  was  in  its  infancy  when  a  few  bold 
men  laid  a  cable  at  the  bottom  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean, 
despite  the  warnings  of  the  authorised  men  of  science. 

The  name  of  "  applied  science  "  is  quite  misleading, 
because,  in  the  great  majority  of  cases,  invention,  far 
from  being  an  application  of  science,  on  the  contrary 
creates  a  new  branch  of  science.  The  American  bridges 
were  no  application  of  the  theory  of  elasticity ;  they 
came  before  the  theory,  and  all  we  can  say  in  favour  of 
science  is,  that  in  this  special  branch,  theory  and  prac- 
tice developed  in  a  parallel  way,  helping  one  another. 
It  was  not  the  theory  of  the  explosives  which  led  to  the 
discovery  of  gunpowder;  gunpowder  was  in  use  for 
centuries  before  the  action  of  the  gases  in  a  gun  was 
submitted  to  scientific  analysis.  And  so  on.  The  great 
processes  of  metallurgy ;  the  alloys  and  the  properties 
they  acquire  from  the  addition  of  very  small  amounts  of 


BRAIN    WORK   AND    MANUAL   WORK.  209 

some  metals  or  metalloids ;  the  recent  revival  of  electric 
lighting  ;  nay,  even  the  weather  forecasts  which  truly  de- 
served the  reproach  of  being  "  unscientific  "  when  they 
were  started  by  an  old  Jack  tar,  Fitzroy — all  these  could 
be  mentioned  as  instances  in  point  Of  course,  we  have 
a  number  of  cases  in  which  the  discovery,  or  the  inven- 
tion, was  a  mere  application  of  a  scientific  law  (cases  like 
*.he  discovery  of  the  planet  Neptune),  but  in  the  immense 
majority  of  cases  the  discovery,  or  the  invention,  is  un- 
scientific to  begin  with.  It  belongs  much  more  to  the 
domain  of  art — art  taking  the  precedence  over  science, 
as  Helmholtz  has  so  well  shown  in  one  of  his  popular 
lectures — and  only  after  the  invention  has  been  made, 
science  comes  to  interpret  it  It  is  obvious  that  each 
invention  avails  itself  of  the  previously  accumulated 
knowledge  and  modes  of  thought ;  but  in  most  cases  it 
makes  a  start  in  advance  upon  what  is  known ;  it  makes 
a  leap  in  the  unknown,  and  thus  opens  a  quite  new 
series  of  facts  for  investigation.  This  character  of  in- 
vention, which  is  to  make  a  start  in  advance  of  former 
knowledge,  instead  of  merely  applying  a  law,  makes  it 
identical,  as  to  the  processes  of  mind,  with  discovery; 
and,  therefore,  people  who  are  slow  in  invention  are  also 
slow  in  discovery. 

In  most  cases,  the  inventor,  however  inspired  by  the 
general  state  of  science  at  a  given  moment,  starts  with  a 
very  few  settled  facts  at  his  disposal.  The  scientific 
facts  taken  into  account  for  inventing  the  steam-engine, 
or  the  telegraph,  or  the  phonograph  were  strikingly 
elementary.  So  that  we  can  affirm  that  what  we 
presently  know  is  already  sufficient  for  resolving  any  of 
the  great  problems  which  stand  in  the  order  of  the  day 
— prime-motors  without  the  use  of  steam,  the  storage 
of  energy,  the  transmission  of  force,  or  the  flying- 
machine.  If  these  problems  are  not  yet  solved,  it  is 
merely  because  of  the  want  of  inventive  genius,  the 
scarcity   of  educated   men   endowed   with   it,   and   the 

M 


2IO  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOJ'S. 

present  divorce  between  science  and  industry.  On  the 
one  side,  we  have  men  who  are  endowed  with  capacities 
for  invention,  but  have  neither  the  necessary  scientific 
knowledge  nor  the  means  for  experimenting  during  long 
years;  and,  on  the  other  side,  we  have  men  endowed 
with  knowledge  and  facilities  for  experimenting,  but 
devoid  of  inventive  genius,  owing  to  their  education 
and  to  the  surroundings  they  live  in — ^not  to  speak  of 
the  patent  system,  which  divides  and  scatters  the  efforts 
of  the  inventors  instead  of  combining  them. 

The  flight  of  genius  which  has  characterised  the 
workers  at  the  outset  of  modern  industry  has  been  miss- 
ing in  our  professional  men  of  science.  And  they  will 
not  recover  it  as  long  as  they  remain  strangers  to 
the  world,  amidst  their  dusty  bookshelves ;  as  long  as 
they  are  not  workers  themselves,  amidst  other  workers, 
at  the  blaze  of  the  iron  furnace,  at  the  machine  in  the 
factory,  at  the  turning-lathe  in  the  engineering  work- 
shop ;  sailors  amidst  sailors  on  the  sea,  and  fishers 
in  the  fishing  boat,  wood-cutters  in  the  forest,  tillers  of 
the  soil  in  the  field.  Our  teachers  in  art  have  re- 
peatedly told  us  of  late  that  we  must  not  expect  a 
revival  of  art  as  long  as  handicraft  remains  what  it  is ; 
they  have  shown  how  Greek  and  mediaeval  art  were 
daughters  of  handicraft,  how  one  was  feeding  the  other. 
The  same  is  true  with  regard  to  handicraft  and  science ; 
I  heir  separation  is  the  decay  of  both.  As  to  the  grand 
inspirations  which  unhappily  have  been  so  much  ne- 
glected in  most  of  the  recent  discussions  about  art — and 
which  are  missing  in  science  as  well — these  can  be  ex- 
pected only  when  humanity,  breaking  its  present  bonds, 
shall  make  a  new  start  in  the  higher  principles  of  soli- 
darity, doing  away  with  the  present  duality  of  moral 
sense  and  philosophy. 

It  is  evident,  however,  that  all  men  and  women  cannot 
equally  enjoy  the  pursuit  of  scientific  work.  The  variety 
^f  inclinations  is  such  that  some  will  find  more  pleasure 


BRAIN    WORK   AND    MANUAL   WORK.  211 

in  science,  some  others  in  art,  and  others  again  in  some 
of  the  numberless  branches  of  the  production  of  wealth. 
But,  whatever  the  occupations  preferred  by  every  one, 
every  one  will  be  the  more  useful  in  his  own  branch  if 
he  is  in  possession  of  a  serious  scientific  knowledge. 
And,  whosoever  he  might  be — scientist  or  artist,  physi- 
cist or  surgeon,  chemist  or  sociologist,  historian  or  poet 
— he  would  be  the  gainer  if  he  spent  a  part  of  his  life  in 
the  workshop  or  the  farm  (the  workshop  and  the  farm), 
if  he  were  in  contact  with  humanity  in  its  daily  work, 
and  had  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  he  himself 
discharges  his  duties  as  an  unprivileged  producer  of 
wealth.  How  much  better  the  historian  and  the  soci- 
ologist would  understand  humanity  if  they  knew  it,  not 
in  books  only,  not  in  a  few  of  its  representatives,  but  as 
a  whole,  in  its  daily  life,  daily  work,  and  daily  affairs? 
How  much  more  medicine  would  trust  to  hygiene,  and 
how  much  less  to  prescriptions,  if  the  young  doctors  were 
the  nurses  of  the  sick  and  the  nurses  received  the  educa- 
tion of  the  doctors  of  our  time!  And  how  much  the 
poet  would  gain  in  his  feeling  of  the  beauties  of  nature, 
how  much  better  would  he  know  the  human  heart,  if 
he  met  the  rising  sun  amidst  the  tillers  of  the  soil,  him- 
self a  tiller ;  if  he  fought  against  the  storm  with  the 
sailors  on  board  ship ;  if  he  knew  the  poetry  of  labour 
and  rest,  sorrow  and  joy,  struggle  and  conquest !  Greift 
nur  hinein  in's  voile  Menschenleben  !  Goethe  said  ;  Ein 
jeder  lebfs — nicht  vielen  isfs  bekannU  But  how  few 
poets  follow  his  advice! 

The  so-called  division  of  labour  has  grown  under  a 
system  which  condemned  the  masses  to  toil  all  the 
day  long,  and  all  the  Hfe  long,  at  the  same  wearisome 
kind  of  labour.  But  if  we  take  into  account  how  few 
are  the  real  producers  of  wealth  in  our  present  society, 
and  how  squandered  is  their  labour,  we  must  recognise 
that  Franklin  was  right  in  saying  that  to  work  five  hours 
a  day  would  generally  do  for  supplying  each  member 


212  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND  WORKSHOPS. 

of  a  civilised  nation  with  the  comfort  now  accessible 
for  the  few  only,  provided  everybody  took  his  due 
share  in  production.  But  we  have  made  some  progress 
since  Franklin's  times,  and  some  of  that  progress  in  the 
hitherto  most  backward  branch  of  production  has  been 
indicated  in  the  preceding  pages.  Even  in  that  branch 
the  productivity  of  labour  can  be  immensely  increased, 
and  work  itself  rendered  ezisy  and  pleasant.  More  than 
one  half  of  the  working  day  would  thus  remain  to  every 
one  for  the  pursuit  of  art,  science,  or  any  hobby  he  might 
prefer ;  and  his  work  in  those  fields  jvould  be  the  more 
profitable  if  he  spent  the  other  half  of  the  day  in  pro- 
ductive work — if  art  and  science  were  followed  from  mere 
inclination,  not  for  mercantile  purposes.  Moreover,  a 
community  organised  on  the  principles  of  all  being 
workers  would  be  rich  enough  to  conclude  that  every 
man  and  woman,  after  having  reached  a  certain  age — 
say  of  forty  or  more — ought  to  be  relieved  from  the 
moral  obligation  of  taking  a  direct  part  in  the  perform- 
ance of  the  necessary  manual  work,  so  as  to  be  able 
entirely  to  devote  himself  or  herself  to  whatever  he  or 
she  chooses  in  the  domain  of  art,  or  science,  or  any 
kind  of  work.  Free  pursuit  in  new  branches  of  art  and. 
knowledge,  free  creation,  and  free  development  thus; 
might  be  fully  guaranteed.  And  such  a  community- 
would  not  know  misery  amidst  wealth.  It  would  not 
know  the  duality  of  conscience  which  permeates  our 
life  and  stifles  every  noble  effort.  It  would  freely  take 
its  flight  towards  the  highest  regions  of  progress  com- 
patible with  human  nature. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

CONCLUSION. 

Readers  who  have  had  the  patience  to  follow  the  facts 
accumulated  in  this  book ;  especially  those  who  have 
given  them  a  thoughtful  attention,  will  probably  feel 
convinced  of  the^  immense_powers  over  the  productive 
forces  of  Nature  that  man  has  acquired  within  the  last 
haff'arcentury. — Comparing  the  achievements  indicated 
in  this  book  with  the  present  state  of  production,  some 
will,  I  hope,  also  ask  themselves  the  question  which  will 
be  ere  long  the  main  object  of  a  scientific  political 
economy :  Whether  the  means  now  in  use  for  satisfying 
human  needspunder  the  present  system  of  permanent 
division  of  functions  and  production  for  profits,  are  really 
economical ;  whether  they  really  lead  to  economy  in  the 
expenditure  of  human  forces ;  or  whether  they  are  not 
mere  wasteful  survivals  from  a  past  that  was  plunged 
into  darkness,  ignorance  and  oppression,  and  never  took 
into  consideration  the  economical  and  social  value  of  the 
human  being  ? 

In  the  domain  of  agriculture  it  may  be  taken  as 
proved  that  if  a  small  part  only  of  the  time  that  is  now 
^iyen  in  each~hatTon  or  region  to  field  culture  was  g^ven 
to  well  thought  out  and  socially  carried  out  permanent 
improvements  of  the  soil,  the  duration  of  work  which 
would  be  required  afterwards  to  grow  the  yearly  bread- 
food  for  an  average  family  of  five  would  be  less  than  a 
fortnight  every  year ;  and  that  the  work  required  for 
that  purpose  would  not  be  the  hard  toil  of  the  ancient 

(213) 


214  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   Ax\D   WORKSHOPS. 

slave,  but  work  which  would  be  agreeable  to  the  phy- 
sical forces  of  every  healthy  man  and  woman  in  the 
country. 

It  has  been  proved  that  by  following  the  methods 
of  intensive  market-gardening — partly  under  glass — 
vegetables  and  fruit  can  be  grown  in  such  quantities 
that  men  could  be  provided  with  a  rich  vegetable  food 
and  a  profusion  of  fruit,  if  they  simply  devoted  to  the 
task  of  growing  them  the  hours  which  every  one  will- 
ingly devotes  to  work  in  the  open  air,  after  having  spent 
most  of  his  day  in  the  factory,  the  mine,  or  the  study. 
Provided,  of  course,  that  the  production  of  food-stuffs 
should  not  be  the  work  of  the  isolated  individual,  but 
the  planned  out  and  combined  action  of  human  groups. 

It  has  also  been  proved — and  those  who  care  to 
verify  it  by  themselves  may  easily  do  so  by  calculating 
the  real  expenditure  for  labour  which  was  lately  made 
in  the  building  of  workmen's  houses  by  both  private 
persons  arfd  THUhicipalities  * — that  under  a  proper  com- 
bination of  labour,  twenty  to  twenty-four  months  of  one 
man's  work  would  be  sufficient  to  secure  for  ever,  for 
a  family  of  five,  an  apartment  or  a  house  provided  with 
all  the  comforts  which  modern  hygiene  and  taste  could 
require. 

And  it  has  been  demonstrated  by  actual  experiment 
that,  by  adopting  methods  of  education,  advocated  long 
since  and  paftially  applied  here  and  there,  it  is  most 
easy  to  convey  to  children  of  an  average  intelligence, 
before  they  have  reached  the  age  of  fourteen  or  fifteen, 
a  broad  general  comprehension  of  Nature,  as  well  as  of 
human  societies ;  to  familiarise  their  minds  with  sound 
methods  of  both  scientific  research  and  technical  work ; 
and  inspire  their  hearts  with  a  deep  feeling  of  human 
solidarity  and  justice.     And  that  it  is  extremely  easy 

*  These  figures  may  be  computed,  for  instance,  from  the  data  con- 
tained in  "  The  Ninth  Annual  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Labour  of 
the  United  States,  for  the  year  1893:  Building  and  Loan  Associations". 


CONCLUSION.  -     215 

to  convey  during  the  next  four  or  five  years  a  reasoned, 
scientific  knowledge  of  Nature's  laws,  as  well  as  a 
knowledge,  at  once  reasoned  and  practical,  of  the  tech- 
nical methods  of  satisfying  man's  material  needs.  _Ear 
from  being  inferior  to  the  "  specialised  "  young  persons 
manufactured  by  our  universities,  the  comp/eU  huTna.n 
being,  trained  to  use  his  brain  and  his  hands,  excels 
^iiem,  on  the  contrary,  in  all  respects,  especially  as  an 
initiator  and  an  inventor  in  both  science  and  technics. 

All  this  has  been  proved.  It  is  an  acquisition  of 
the  times  we  live  in — an  acquisition  which  has  been  won 
despite  the  innumerable  obstacles  always  thrown  in  the 
way  of  every  initiative  mind.  It  has  been  won  by  the 
obscure  tillers  of  the  soil,  from  whose  hands  greedy 
States,  landlords  and  middlemen  snatch  the  fruit  of 
their  labour  even  before  it  is  ripe ;  by  obscure  teachers 
who  only  too  often  fall  crushed  under  the  weight  of 
Church,  State,  commercial  competition,  inertia  of  mind 
and  prejudice. 

And  now,  in  the  presence  of  all  these  conquests — 
what  is  the  reality  of  things  ? 

Nine-tenths  of  the  whole  population  of  grain-export- 
ing countries  like  Russia,  one-half  of  it  in  countries  Hke 
France  which  live  on  home-grown  food,  work  upon  the 
land — most  of  them  in  the  same  way  as  the  slaves  of 
antiquity  did,  only  to  obtain  a  meagre  crop  from  a  soil, 
and  with  a  machinery  which  they  cannot  improve,  be- 
cause taxation,  rent  and  usury  keep  them  always  as  near 
as  possible  at  the  margin  of  starvation.  At  the  begin- 
ning of  this  century,  whole  populations  plough  with  the 
same  plough  as  their  mediaeval  ancestors,  live  in  the  same 
incertitude  of  the  morrow,  and  are  as  -carefully  denied 
education ;  and  they  have,  in  claiming  their  portion  of 
bread,  to  march  with  their  children  and  wives  against 
their  own  sons'  bayonets,  as  their  grandfathers  did  a 
hundred  and  three  hundred  years  ago. 

In  industrially  develo£edcountries,  a  couple  of  months' 


2l6  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

work,  or  even  much  less  than  that,  would  be  sufficient 
to  produce  for  a  family  a  rich  and  vajried  vegetable 
and  animal  food.  But^the  researches  of  Engel  (at 
Berlin)  and  his  many  followers  tell  us  that  the  workman's 
family  has  to  spend  one  full  half  of  its  yearly  earnings 
— that  is,  to  give  six  months  of  labour,  and  often  more, 
to  provide  its  food.  And  what  food !  Is  not  bread  and 
dripping  the  staple  food  of  more  than  one-half  of  Eng- 
lish children .? 

One  month  of  work  every  year  would  be  quite  suffi- 
cient to  provide  the  worker  with  a  healthy  dwelling. 
But  it  is  from  25  to  40  per  cent,  of  his  yearly  earnings 
—that  is,  from  three  to  five  months  of  his  working  time 
every  year — that  he  has  to  spend  in  order  to  get  a  dwell- 
ing, in  most  cases  unhealthy  and  far  too  small ;  and^Qiis 
dwelling  will  never  be  his  own,  even  though  at  the  age 
of  forty-five  or  fifty  he  is  sure  to  be  sent  away  from 
the  factory,  because  the  work  that  he  used  to  do  will  by 
that  time  be  accomplished  by  a  machine  and  a  child. 

We  all  know  that  the  child  ought,  at  least,  to  be 
familiarised  with  the  forces  of  Nature  which  some  day 
he  will  have  to  utilise ;  that  he  ought  to  be  prepared 
to  keep  pace  in  his  life  with  the  steady  progress  of 
science  and  technics ;  that  he  ought  to  study  science 
and  learn  a  trade.  Every  one  will  grant  thus  much; 
but  what  do  we  do  ?  From  the  age  of  ten  or  even  nine 
we  send  the  child  to  push  a  coal-cart  in  a  mine,  or  to 
bind,  with  a  little  monkey's  agility,  the  two  ends  of 
threads  broken  in  a  spinning  gin.  From  the  age  of 
thirteen  we  compel  the  girl — a  child  yet — to  work  as  a 
"  woman "  at  the  weaving-loom,  or  to  stew  in  the 
poisoned,  over-heated  air  of  a  cotton-dressing  factory, 
or,  perhaps,  .  to  be  poisoned  in  the  death  chambers 
of  a  Staffordshire  pottery.  As  to  those  who  have  the 
relatively  rare  luck  of  receiving  some  more  education, 
we  crush  their  minds  by  useless  overtime,  we  con- 
sciously deprive  them  of  all  possibility  of  themselves 


CONCLUSION.  ji; 

becoming  producers ;  and  under  an  educational  system 
of  which  the  motive  is  "  profits,"  and  the  means 
"  specfalisation,"  we  simply  work  to  death  the  women 
teachers  who  take  their  educational  duties  in  earnest 
What  floods  of  useless  sufferings  deluge  every  so-called 
civilised  land  in  the  world ! 

When  we  look  back  on  ages  past,  and  see  there  the 
same  sufferings,  we  may  say  that  perhaps  then  they 
were  unavoidable  on  account  of  the  ignorance  which  pre- 
vailed. But  human  geoius,  stimulated  by  our  modern 
Renaissance,  has  already  indicated  new  paths  to  follow. 

For  thousands  of  years  in  succession  to  grow  one's 
food  was  the  burden,  almost  the  curse,  of  mankind. 
But  it  need  be  so  no  more.  If  you  make  yourselves 
the  soil,  and  partly  the  temperature  and  the  moisture 
which  each  crop  requires,  you  will  see  that  to  grow 
the  yearly  food  of  a  family,  under  rational  conditions 
of  culture,  requires  so  little  labour  that  it  might  al- 
most be  done  as  a  mere  change  from  other  pursuits. 
If  you  return  to  the  soil,  and  co-operate  with  your 
neighbours  instead  of  erecting  high  walls  to  conceal 
yourself  from  their  looks ;  if  you  utiHse  what  experi- 
ment has  already  taught  us,  and  call  to  your  aid  science 
and  technical  invention  which  never  fail  to  answer  to 
the  call — look  only  at  what  they  have  done  for  warfare 
— ^you  will  be  astonished  at  the  facility  with  which 
you  can  bring  a  rich  and  varied  food  out  of  the  soil. 
You  will  admire  the  amount  of  sound  knowledge  which 
your  children  will  acquire  by  your  side,  the  rapid  growth 
of  their  intelligence,  and  the  facility  with  which  they 
will  grasp  the  laws  of  Nature,  animate  and  inanimate. 

Have  the  factory  and  the  workshop  at  the  gates  of 
your  fields  and  gardens,  and  work  in  them.  Not  those 
large  establishments,  of  course,  in  which  huge  masses 
of  metals  have  to  be  dealt  with  and  which  are  better 
placed  at  certain  spots  indicated  by  Nature,  but  the 
countless  variety  of  workshops  and  factories  which  are 


2l8  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

required  to  satisfy  the  infinite  diversity  of  tastes  among 
civilised  men.  Not  those  factories  in  which  children 
lose  all  the  appearance  of  children  in  the  atmosphere  of 
an  industrial  hell,  but  those  airy  and  hygienic,  and 
consequently  economical,  factories  in  which  human  life 
is  of  more  account  than  machinery  and  the  making  of 
extra  profits,  of  which  we  already  find  a  few  samples 
here  and  there  ;  factories  and  workshops  into  which  men, 
women  and  children  will  not  be  driven  by  hunger,  but 
will  be  attracted  by  the  desire  of  finding  an  activity 
suited  to  their  tastes,  and  where,  aided  by  the  motor 
and  the  machine,  they  will  choose  the  branch  of  activity 
which  best  suits  their  inclinationsj 

Let  those  factories  and  workshops  be  erected,  not 
for  making  profits  by  selling  shoddy  or  useless  and 
noxious  things  to  enslaved  Africans,  but  to  satisfy  the 
unsatisfied  needs  of  millions  of  Europeans.  And  again, 
you  will  be  struck  to  see  with  what  facility  and  in  how 
short  a  time  your  needs  of  dress  and  of  thousands  of 
articles  of  luxury  can  be  satisfied,  when  production  is 
carried  on  for  satisfying  real  needs  rather  than  for 
satisfying  shareholders  by  high  profits  or  for  pouring 
gold  into  the  pockets  of  promoters  and  bogus  directors. 
Very  soon  you  will  yourselves  feel  interested  in  that 
work,  and  you  will  have  occasion  to  admire  in  your 
children  their  eager  desire  to  become  acquainted  with 
Nature  and  its  forces,  their  inquisitive  inquiries  as  to 
the  powers  of  machinery,  and  their  rapidly  developing 
inventive  genius. 

Such  is  the  future  —  already  possible,  already  realis- 
able ;  such  is  the  present — already  condemned  and  about 
to  disappear.  And  what  prevents  us  from  turning  oiu: 
backs  to  this  present  and  from  marching  towards  that 
future;  or,  at  least,  making  the  first  steps  towards  it,  is 
not  the  "  failure  of  science,"  but  first  of  all  our  crass 
/  cupidity — the  cupidity  of  the  man  who  killed  the^TieiT 
/-^hat  was   laying  golden   eggs — and   then_Qur   laziness 


CONCLUSION.  219 

of  mind — that  mental  cowardice  so  carefully  nurtured  in 
the  past 

For  centuries  science  and  so-called  practical  wisdom 
haie.  said  to  man :  "  It  is  good  to  be  rich,  to  be  able  to 
satisfy,  at  least,  your  material  needs  ;  but  the  only  means 
to  be  rich  is  to  so  train  your  mind  and  capacities  as  to 
be  able  to  compel  other  men — slaves,  serfs  or  wage- 
earners — to  make  these  riches  for  you.  (  You  have  no 
choice.  Either  you  must  stand" m "the  ranks  of  the 
peasants  and  the  artisans  who,  whatsoever  economists 
and  moralists  may  promise  them  in  the  future,  are  now 
periodically  doomed  to  starve  after  each  bad  crop  or 
during  their  strikes,  and  to  be  shot  down  by  their  own 
sons  the  moment  they  lose  patience.  Or  you  must 
train  your  faculties  so  as  to  be  a  military  commander 
of  the  masses,  or  to  be  accepted  as  one  of  the  wheels  of 
the  governing  machinery  of  the  State,  or  to  become  a 
manager  of  men  in  commerce  or  industry."  For  many 
centuries  there  was  no  other  choice,  and  men  followed 
that  advice,  without  finding  in  it  happiness,  either  for 
themselves  and  their  own  children,  or  for  those  whom 
they  pretended  to  preserve  from  worse  misfortunes. 

But  modem  knowledge  has  another  issue  to  offer 
to  thinking  men.  IL tells  them  that  in  order  to  be  rich 
they  need  not  take  the  bread  from  the  mouths  of  others ; 
but  that  the  more  rational  outcome  would  be  a  society 
in  which  men,  with  the  work  of  their  own  hands  and 
intelligence,  and  by  the  aid  of  the  machinery  already 
invented  and  to  be  invented,  should  themselves  create 
all  imaginable  riches.  Technics  and  science  will  not  be 
lagging  behind  if  production  takes  such  a  direction. 
Guided  by  observation,  analysis  and  experiment  they  will 
answer  all  possible  demands.  They  will  reduce  the 
time  which  is  necessary  for  producing  wealth  to  any 
desired  amount,  so  as  to  leave  to  every  one  as  much 
leisure  as  he  or  she  may  ask  for.  They  surely  cannot 
guarantee    happiness,    because    happiness    depends    as 


220  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

much,  or  even  more,  upon  the  individual  himself  as  upon 
his  surroundings.  But  they  guarantee,  at  least,  the 
happiness  that  can  be  found  in  the  full  and  varied 
exercise  of  the  different  capacities  of  the  human  being, 
in  work  that  need  not  be  overwork,  and  in  the  conscious- 
ness that  one  is  not  endeavouring  to  base  his  own 
happiness  upon  the  misery  of  others. 

These  are  the  horizons  which  the  above  inquiry  opens 
to  the  unprejudiced  mind 


APPENDIX. 

A. — French  Imports. 

About  one-tenth  part  of  the  cereals  consumed  in  France  is 
still  imported;  but,  as  will  be  seen  in  a  subsequent  chapter, 
the  progress  in  agriculture  has  lately  been  so  rapid  that  even 
without  Algeria  France  will  soon  have  a  surplus  of  cereals. 
Wine  is  imported,  but  nearly  as  much  is  exported.     So  that 
coffee  and  oil  seeds  remain  the  only  food  articles  of  durable 
importance  for  import.     For  coal  and  coke  France  is  still 
tributary  to  Belgium  and  this  country;   but  it  is  chiefly  the 
inferiority  of  organisation  of  coal  extraction  which  stands  in 
the  way  of  the  home  supply.     The  other  important  items  of 
imports  are :  raw  cotton  (about  ;£8,ooo,ooo  of  net  imports), 
Taw    wool    to    the    same    amount,    and    raw    silk    (about 
,;£5,ooo,ooo),  as  well  as   hides   and   furs.     The   exports   of 
manufactured  goods  were  ;£8o,ooo,ooo  in   1890  and  about 
,^^7  4,000,000  in  subsequent  years.     Exports  of  textiles,  ex- 
clusive   of    yarn    and    linen,    ^£29,800,000    in    1890,    and 
^25,500,000  in  1891-4.     Imports  of  all  textiles,  ;£6,9oo,ooo 
in  1890,  and  ;£4,8oo,ooo  in  189 1-4. 

B. — Growth  of  Industry  in  Russia. 

The  growth  of  industry  in  Russia  will  be  best  seen  from 
the  following : — 

i88o-i.  1S93-4. 

Cwts.  Cwts. 

Cast  iron 8,810,000  25,450,000 

Iron 5,770,000  9,700,000 

Steel 6,030,000  9,610,000 

Railway  rails 3,960,000  4,400,000 

Coal 64,770,000  160,000,000 

Naphtha 6,900,000  108,700,000 

Sugar 5,030,000  11,470,000 

Raw  cotton,  home  grown    .         .         .  293,000  1,225,000 
(22  [) 


222  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AXD   WORKSHOPS. 

1889. 
Cottons,  spinning       ....  ;^7,4io,ooo     /"iS.yeo.ooo 
„       weaving        ....     9,970,000        22,230,000 
,1       printing  and  dyeing      .         .     6,110,000  7,280,000 


G — Iron  Industry  in  Germany. 

The  following  tables  will  give  some  idea  of  the  growth  of 
mining  and  metallurgy  in  Germany. 

The  extraction  of  minerals  in  the  German  Empire,  in 
metric  tons,  which  are  very  little  smaller  than  the  English 
ton  (0.984),  was: — 

1883.  1893. 

Tons.  Tons. 

Coal 55,943,000  76,773,000 

Lignite ,     14,481,000  22,103,000 

Iron  ore 8,616,000  12,404,000 

Zinc  ore 678,000  729,000 

Mineral  salts  (chiefly  potash)    ,        ,       1,526,000  2,379,000 

1874.  1894. 

Pig  iron 1,906,260  5,382,170 

Half  finished  and  finished  iron  and 

steel 489,000  5,825,000 

Imports  of  iron  and  steel  .        .        .         757>7oo  349,160 

Exports  of  same         ....         546,900  2,008,760 
Total  home  consumption  of  pig  iron, 

iron  and  steel         ....       2,117,080  3»772,570 

Eng.  lb.  Eng.  lb. 

Do.  per  head  of  population        .        .                 115  161 
Production    of    same    per    head   of 

population 103  232 

For  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Luxemburg  the  proportion  is 
still  more  striking:  — 

1868.  1893. 

Tons.  Tons. 

Iron  ore  raised 722,000  3,352,000 

Pig  iron  produced  (1871)  .         .         .           93.400  558,300 
Steel,  begun  to  be  produced  in  1886 

only 20,554  129,120 

A^orkmen  employed  ....             3.508  7,087 

(From  the  jfournal  of  the  Iron  and  Steel  Institute,  vol.  xlviii.,  1893, 
p.  6.) 


APPENDIX.  223 


D. — Machinery  in  Germany. 

The  growth  of  the  productive  powers  in  Germany  is  best 
illustrated  by  the  development  of  machinery.  In  the  year 
1879  Prussia  had  29,985  standing  engines  (887,780  horse- 
power), 5442  moving  engines  (47,100  horse-power),  and  623 
engines  on  ships  (50,310  horse-power).  Total,  35,960 
engines  (985,190  horse-power).  Fifteen  years  later  the  re- 
spective figures  were: — 57,224  standing  (2,172,250  horse- 
power), 14,425  moving  (147,130  horse-power),  and  1726  on 
ships  (219,770  horse-power).  Total,  73,375  engines 
(2,539>i5o  horse-power). 

Same  increase  in  Bavaria.  In  1879,  241 1  standing  engines 
(70,680  horse-power),  892  moving  (5520  horse-power),  and  98 
on  ships  (2860  horse-power).  Total,  3401  engines  (79,060 
horse-power).  In  1889  there  were  3819  standing  engines 
(124,680  horse-power),  2021  moving  (13,730  horse-power), 
and  38  on  ships  (4370  horse-power).  Total,  5868  engines 
(142,750  horse-power). 

For  the  German  Empire  Prof.  Lexis  estimated  the  total 
of  all  engines  in  1879  at  65,170  engines,  4,510,640  horse- 
power. In  1892  the  aggregate  horse-power  was  7,200,000, 
namely,  2,500,000  horse-power  in  standing  engines,  4,200,000 
in  moving,  and  500,000  on  ships  (Schmoller's  Jahrbuch^  xix., 

i.,  p.  275)- 

The  rapid  progress  in  the  fabrication  of  machinery  in 
Germany  is  still  better  seen  from  the  growth  of  the  German 
exports  as  shown  by  the  following  table:  — 

i8go.  1895. 

Machines  and  parts  thereof        .        .  ;£'2, 450,000  ;£"3, 215,000 

Sewing-machines  and  parts  thereof    .        315,000  430,000 

Locomotives  and  locomobiles     .        .        280,000  420,000 

Every  one  knows  that  part  of  the  German  sewing-machines 
and  a  considerable  amount  of  tools  find  their  way  even  into 
this  country,  and  that  German  tools  are  plainly  recommended 
in  English  books. 


224  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 


E. — Cotton  Industry  in  Germany. 

Dr.  G.  Schulze-Gaewernitz,  in  his  excellent  work,  The 
Cotton  Trade  in  England  and  on  the  Continent  (English  trans- 
lation by  Oscar  S.  Hall,  London,  1895),  calls  attention  to  the 
fact  that  Germany  has  certainly  not  yet  attained,  in  her  cotton 
industry,  the  high  technical  level  of  development  attained 
by  England;  but  he  shows  also  the  progress  lately  realised. 
The  cost  of  each  yard  of  plain  cotton,  notwithstanding  low 
wages  and  long  hours,  is  still  greater  in  Germany  than  in 
England,  as  seen  from  the  following  tables.  Taking  a  cer-- 
tain  quality  of  plain  cotton  in  both  countries,  he  gives  (p. 
151,  German  edition)  the  following  comparative  figures:  — 


Hours  of  labour     .... 
Average  weekly  earnings  of  the  opera 

tives 

Yards  woven  per  week  per  operative 
Cost  per  yard  of  cotton 


England.  Germany. 

9  hours  12  hours 

i6s,  3d.  IIS.  8d. 

706  yards  466  yards 

o.275d.  0.303d. 


But  he  remarks  also  that  in  all  sorts  of  printed  cottons,  in 
which  fancy,  colours  and  invention  play  a  predominant  part, 
the  advantages  are  entirely  on  the  side  of  the  smaller  Ger?nan 
factories. 

In  the  spinning  mills  the  advantages,  on  the  contrary,  con- 
tinue to  remain  entirely  on  the  side  of  England,  the  number 
of  operatives  per  1000  spindles  being  in  various  countries  as 
follows  (p.  91,  English  edition):  — 

Per  1000  spindles. 

Bombay 25  operatives. 

Italy 13 

Alsace         .••••...      9^       „ 

Mulhouse    .        .        , 7I       ». 

Gennany,  1861   .,',....  20         „ 

„         1882 8  to  9  „ 

England,  1837 7         „ 

1887 3 

For  the  last  ten  years  considerable  improvements  have 
taken  place.  "India  shows  us,  since  1884,  extraordinary 
developm.ents,"  Schulze-Gaewernitz  remarks,  and  "there  is 
no  doubt  that  Germany  also  has  reduced  the  number  of 


APPENDIX.  225 

operatives  per  1000  spindles  since  the  last  Inquest-".  "From 
a  great  quantity  of  materials  lying  before  me,  I  cull,"  he 
writes,  "  the  following,  which,  however,  refer  solely  to  lead- 
ing and  technically  distinguished  spinning  mills :  — 

Per  looo  spindles. 

Switzerland 6.2  operatives. 

Mulhouse 5.8  „ 

Baden  and  Wiirtemberg 6.2  „ 

Bavaria 6.8  „ 

Saxony  (new  and  splendid  mills)      .        .         .       7.2  „ 

Vosges,  France  (old  spinning  mills)         .         .      8.9  „ 

Russia 16.6  „ 

The  average  counts  of  yarn  for  all  these  are  between 
twenties  and  thirties. 

The  progress  realised  in  Augsburg  between  1875  and  1891 
appears  as  follows  :  — 


1875. 

1B91. 

Per  spindle,  lb.  yarn     . 

.         .        .    32.6 

35.9 

Counts 

.     34 

34 

Per  spindle,  lb.  cotton  .         .         , 

.         .         .     39.3 

42.4 

Operatives,  per  1000  spindles 

.      9-7 

7.« 

Hours  of  labour,  per  week    . 

.     72 

66 

Wages  have  been  raised  everywhere." 


F. — Mining  and  Textiles  in  Austria. 

To  give  an  idea  of  the  development  of  industries  in 
Austria-Hungary,  it  is  sufficient  to  mention  the  growth  of  her 
mining  industries  and  the  present  state  of  her  textile  in- 
dustries. 

The  value  of  the  yearly  extraction  of  coal  and  iron  ore 
appears  as  follows  :  — 

1880.  1893. 

Coal  (Austria)       .....  ;^i,6i  1,000  ;f  2,796,000 

Brown  coal  (Austria)    ....     1,281,300  2,837,400 

Raw  iron  (Austria-Hungary)         .        .     1,749,000  3,015,800 

At  the  present  time  the  exports  of  coal  entirely  balance  the 
imports. 

As  to  the  textile  industries,  Austria  alone,  already  in  1890, 
had  1970  steam-engines,  of  113,280  horse-power,  employed  in 

IS 


226  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND  WORKSHOPS. 

the  fabrication  of  textiles.  For  cotton  spinning  she  had 
153  establishments,  with  2,392,360  spindles,  employing  33,815 
work-people,  while  for  cotton  weaving  she  had  194  estab- 
lishments, with  47,902  power-looms. 

The  imports  of  raw  cotton  attained,  in  1894,  the  respect- 
able sum  of  ;£4,333,ooo  (cotton  yarn,  ;£i,37  5,000);  of  wool, 
;£3,ooo,ooo  (woollen  yarn,  ;£i,775,ooo) ;  of  silk,  ;£i, 560,000; 
while  her  exports  of  woollen  goods  quite  balanced  the  im- 
ports of  the  same. 


G. — Mr.  Gfffen's  and  Mr.  Flux's  Figures  Concerning 
THE  Position  of  the  United  Kingdom  in  Inter- 
national Trade. 

A  few  remarks  concerning  these  figures  may  be  of  some 
avail. 

When  a  sudden  fall  in  the  British  and  Irish  exports  took 
place  in  the  years  1882-6,  and  the  alarmists  took  advantage 
of  the  bad  times  to  raise  the  never-forgotten  war-cry  of  pro- 
tection, especially  insisting  on  the  damages  made  to  British 
trade  by  "  German  competition,"  Mr.  Giff  en  analysed  the 
figures  of  international  trade  in  his  "  Finance  Essays  "  and 
in  a  report  read  in  1888  before  the  Board  of  Trade  Commis- 
sion. Subsequently,  Mr.  A.  W.  Flux  analysed  again  the  same 
figures,  extending  them  to  a  later  period.  He  confirmed 
Mr.  Giffen's  conclusions  and  endeavoured  to  prove  that  the 
famous  "  German  competition  "  is  a  fallacy. 

Mr.  Giffen's  conclusions,  quoted  by  Mr.  A.  W.  Flux  ("  The 
Commercial  Supremacy  of  Great  Britain,"  in  Economical 
Journal,  1894,  iv.,  p.  457),  were  as  follows:  — 

"  On  the  whole,  the  figures  are  not  such  as  to  indicate  any 
great  and  overwhelming  advance  in  German  exports  in  com- 
parison with  those  of  the  United  Kingdom.  There  is  greater 
progress  in  certain  directions,  but,  taken  altogether,  no  great 
disproportionate  advance,  and  in  many  important  markets 
for  the  United  Kingdom  Germany  hardly  appears  at  all." 

In  this  subdued  form,  with  regard  to  German  coinpetition 
alone — and  due  allowance  being  made  for  figures  in  which 


APPENDIX.  227 

no  consideration  is  given  to  what  sort  of  goods  make  a  given 
value  of  exports,  and  in  what  quantities — Mr.  GifFen's  state- 
ment may  be  accepted.     But  that  is  all. 

If  we  take,  however,  Mr.  Giffen's  figures  as  they  are  re- 
produced in  extended  tables  (on  pp.  461-467  of  the  just 
quoted  paper),  tabulated  with  great  pains  in  order  to  show 
that  Germany's  part  in  the  imports  to  several  European 
countries,  such  as  Russia,  Italy,  Servia,  etc.,  has  declined, 
as  well  as  the  part  of  the  United  Kingdom,  all  we  can 
conclude  from  these  figures  is,  that  there  are  other  countries 
besides  Germany,  namely,  the  United  States  and  Belgium, 
which  compete  very  effectively  with  England,  France,  and 
Germany  for  supplying  what  manufactured  goods  are  still 
taken  by  Russia,  Italy,  Servia,  etc.,  from  abroad. 

At  the  same  time  such  figures  give  no  idea  of  the  fact 
that  where  manufactured  metal  goods  were  formerly  supplied, 
coal  and  raw  metals  are  imported  now,  for  the  home  manu- 
facture of  those  same  goods;  or,  where  dyed  and  printed 
cottons  were  imported,  only  yarn  is  now  required.  The  whole 
subject  is  infinitely  more  complicated  than  it  appears  in  Mr. 
Giffen's  calculations;  and,  valuable  as  his  figures  may  have 
been  for  appeasing  exaggerated  fears,  they  contain  no  answer 
whatever  to  the  many  economic  questions  involved  in  the 
matters  treated  by  Mr.  G  iff  en. 


H. — Cotton  Manufacture  in  India. 

The  views  taken  in  the  text  about  the  industrial  develop- 
ment of  India  have  been  confirmed  by  a  mass  of  evidence. 
One  of  them,  coming  from  authorised  quarters,  deserves 
special  attention.  In  an  article  on  the  progress  of  the  Indian 
cotton  manufacture,  the  Textile  Recorder  (15th  October,  1888) 
wrote:  — 

"  No  person  connected  with  the  cotton  industry  can  be 
ignorant  of  the  rapid  progress  of  the  cotton  manufacture  in 
India.  Statistics  of  all  kinds  have  recently  been  brought 
before  the  public,  showing  the  increase  of  production  in  the 
country ;  still  it  does  not  seem  to  be  clearly  understood  that 
t:his  increasing  output  of  cotton  goods  must  seriously  lower 


228  FIELDS,  FACTORIES  AND  WORKSHOPS. 

the  demand  upon  Lancashire  mills,  and  that  it  is  not  by  any 
means  improbable  that  India  may  at  no  very  distant  period 
be  no  better  customer  than  the  United  States  is  now. 

"  In  former  times,  Manchester  goods  were  to  be  found  in 
the  most  remote  villages  on  the  banks  of  the  Ganges  and 
the  Brahmaputra,  and  even  in  the  far  distant  bazaars  of 
Assam,  Sylhet  and  Cachar.  But  now,"  the  Recorder  wrote, 
"a  change  is  taking  place.  Indian  cotton  piece  goods  are 
coming  to  the  front,  and  displacing  those  of  Manchester. 

"  Unbiassed  persons  having  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the 
resources  of  the  country,  and  having  watched  the  growth  of 
the  cotton  industry  during  the  last  ten  years,  do  not  hesitate 
to  say  that  in  a  limited  period  of  time  the  output  of  all  the 
plainer  classes  of  goods  will  be  sufficient  to  meet  the  Indian 
demand  without  the  supply  of  goods  from  Lancashire." 

One  hardly  need  add  at  what  price  the  Indian  manu- 
facturers obtain  cheap  cottons.  The  report  of  the  Bombay 
Factor)-  Commission  which  was  laid  before  Parliament  in 
August,  1888,  contained  facts  of  such  horrible  cruelty  and 
cupidity  as  would  hardly  be  imagined  by  those  who  have 
forgotten  the  disclosures  of  the  inquiry  made  in  this  country 
in  1840-42.  The  factory  engines  are  at  work,  as  a  rule,  from 
5  A.M.  till  7,  8,  or  9  P.M.,  and  the  workers  remain  at  work 
for  twelve,  thirteen,  fourteen  hours,  only  releasing  one  an- 
other for  meals.  In  busy  times  it  happens  that  the  same  set 
of  workers  remain  at  the  gins  and  presses  night  and  day 
with  half  an  hour's  rest  in  the  evening.  In  some  factories 
the  workers  have  their  meals  at  the  gins,  and  are  so  worn 
out  after  eight  and  ten  days'  uninterrupted  work  that  they 
supply  the  gins  mechanically  "  three  parts  asleep  ". 

"  It  is  a  sad  tale  of  great  want  on  one  side,  and  cruel 
cupidity  on  the  other  "  the  official  report  concludes.  How- 
ever, it  would  be  absolutely  erroneous  to  conclude  that  Indian 
manufactures  can  compete  with  the  British  ones  as  long 
as  they  continue  the  terrible  exploitation  of  human  labour 
which  we  see  now.  Forty  years  ago  the  British  manufac- 
tures offered  absolutely  the  same  terrible  picture  of  cruel 
cupidity.  But  times  will  come  when  Indian  workers  will 
restrain  the  cupidity  of  the  capitalists,  and  the  manufactures 


APPENDIX.  229 

of  Bombay  will  be  none  the  worse  for  that  in  the  compe- 
tition with  the  British  manufactures. 


I. — Irrigated  Meadows  in  Italy. 

In  the  Journal  de  t Agriculture  (2nd  P'eb.,  1889)  we  find 
the  following  about  the  mar  cites  of  Milan : — 

"  On  part  of  these  meadows  water  runs  constantly,  on 
others  it  is  only  left  running  for  ten  hours  every  week.  The 
former  give  six  crops  every  year ;  since  February — 80  to  100 
tons  of  grass,  equivalent  to  twenty  to  twenty-five  tons  of 
dry  hay,  being  obtained  from  the  hectare  (eight  to  ten  tons 
per  acre).  Lower  down,  thirteen  tons  of  dry  hay  per  acre 
is  the  regular  crop.  Taking  eighty  acres  placed  in  average 
conditions,  they  will  yield  fifty-six  tons  of  green  grass  per 
hectare,  that  is,  fourteen  tons  of  dry  hay,  or  the  food  of  three 
milch  cows  to  the  hectare  (two  and  a  half  acres).  The  rent 
of  such  meadows  is  from  ;£8  to  £^^  12s.  per  acre." 

For  Indian  com,  the  advantages  of  irrigation  are  equally 
apparent.  On  irrigated  lands,  crops  of  from  seventy-eight 
to  eighty-nine  bushels  per  acre  are  obtained,  as  against 
from  fifty-six  to  sixty-seven  bushels  on  unirrigated  lands,  also 
in  Italy,  and  twenty-eight  to  thirty-three  bushels  in  France 
(Garola,  Les  Cereales). 

As  to  the  ways  in  which  agriculture  is  ruined  in  Italy 
we  can  best  see  them  from  the  work  of  Mr.  Beauclerck 
{Rural  Italy t  London,  1888).  Speaking  of  the  Milan  pro- 
vince, he  remarks  that  we  find  there  "  one  of  the  densest 
agricultural  populations  in  the  world,  congregated  in  a 
country,  of  which  half  is  occupied  by  arid  mountains  "  (416 
inhabitants  to  the  square  mile).  "Flanders  alone  equals 
Milan  in  density  of  population.  The  soil  is  not  naturally 
fertile,  and  an  immense  expenditure  of  capital  and  labour 
has  alone  produced  the  richness  of  the  land."  But  "  the 
taxation  is  fabulously  high,"  as  it  attains  2620  francs  per 
square  kilometre  of  the  cultivated  area.  Altogether,  Mr. 
Beauclerck  considers  that  rural  Italy  pays  300,000,000  francs 
of  direct  taxes,  out  of  returns  not  exceeding  1,000,000,000 
francs,  not  to  mention  the  salt  tax,  the  tax  on  personal 
property  and  the  indirect  taxation. 


230  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AUt)  WORKSHOPS. 

J. — The  Channel  Islands. 

The  excellent  state  of  agriculture  in  Jersey  and  Guernsey 
has  often  been  referred  to  in  the  agricultural  and  general 
literature  of  this  country,  so  I  need  only  refer  to  the  works 
of  Mr.  W.  E.  Bear  {Journal  of  the  Agricultural  Society,  1888  ; 
Quarterly  Review,  1888;  British  Farmer,  etc.)  and  to  the 
exhaustive  work  of  D.  H.  Ansted  and  R.  G.  Latham,  The  Chan- 
nel Islands,  third  edition,  revised  by  E.  Toulmin  Nicolle 
(London,  Allen,   1893). 

Many  English  writers,  certainly  not  those  just  named,  are 
inclined  to  explain  the  successes  obtained  in  Jersey  by  the 
wonderful  climate  of  the  islands  and  the  fertility  of  the  soil. 
As  to  climate,  it  is  certainly  true  that  the  yearly  record  of 
sunshine  in  Jersey  is  greater  than  in  any  English  station. 
It  reaches  from  1842  hours  a  year  (1890)  to  2300  (1893), 
and  thus  exceeds  the  highest  aggregate  sunshine  recorded  in 
any  English  station  by  from  168  to  336  hours  (exclusively 
high  maximum  in  1894)  a  year;  May  and  August  seeming 
to  be  the  best  favoured  months.*  But,  to  quote  from  the 
just  mentioned  work  of  Ansted  and  Latham :  — 

"  There  is,  doubtless,  in  all  the  islands,  and  especially  in 
Guernsey,  an  absence  of  sunheat  and  of  the  direct  action  of  the 
sun's  rays  in  summer,  wliich  must  have  its  effect,  and  a 
remarkable  prevalence  of  cold,  dry,  east  wind  in  late  spring,  re- 
tarding vegetation  "  (p.  407).  Every  one  who  has  spent,  be 
it  only  two  or  three  weeks  in  late  spring  in  Jersey,  must 
know  by  experience  how  true  this  remark  is.  Moreover, 
there  are  the  well-known  Guernsey  fogs,  and  "  owing  also 
to  rain  and  damp  the  trees  suffer  from  mildew  and  blight, 
as  well  as  from  various  aphides ".  The  same  authors  re- 
mark that  the  nectarine  does  not  succeed  in  Jersey  in  the 
open  air  "  owing  to  the  absence  of  autumn  heat  " ;  that  "  the 
wet  autumns  and  cold  summers  do  not  agree  with  the 
apricot,"  and  so  on. 

If  Jersey  potatoes  are,  on  the  average,  three  weeks  in 
advance  of  those  grown  in  Cornwall,  the  fact  is  fully  explained 
by  the  continual  improvements  made  in  Jersey  in  view  of 

•  Ten  Years  of  Sunshine  in  the  British  Isles,  1881-1890. 


APPENDIX.  231 

obtaining,  be  it  ever  so  small,  quantities  of  potatoes  a  few 
days  in  advance,  either  by  special  care  taken  to  plant  them 
out  as  soon  as  possible,  protecting  them  from  the  cold  winds, 
or  by  choosing  tiny  pieces  of  land  naturally  protected  or 
better  exposed.  The  difference  in  price  between  the  earliest 
and  the  later  potatoes  being  immense,  the  greatest  efforts 
are  made  to  obtain  an  early  crop,  and  it  would  seem  that 
the  potatoes  begin  to  be  grown  earlier  and  earlier,  so  that 
three  or  perhaps  even  four  weeks  have  been  won  within  the 
last  ten  years. 

The  following  table  shows  when  the  exporting  season 
began  and  what  prices  were  realised  per  cabot  («  -^5-  of  a 
ton)  on  the  very  first  day  of  export :  — 

B.       d.  B.       d. 

1883,  May  22 i     12    o  to  14    o 

1884,  „       6 6    6  „     8    o 

1885,  ,,19 60 

1886,  June    2 60  ,,70 

1887,  May  24 8    o  „    10    o 

1888,  „     29   . 8     o  „    to    o 

1889,  ,,14 .       8     o  „    10    o 

i8go,     „       6 9     o  ,,    10    o 

1891,  ,,1 12     o  „    15     o 

1892,  ,,17 12     o  ,,    14     o 

1893,  April  24 8     3   „      8     6 

1894,  ,,26 II     6 

The  decline  of  prices  per  ton  is  best  seen  from  the  fol- 
lowing :  — 


1887. 

1888. 

1889. 

1894. 

Week  ending  :— 
May  5 

;^i8     2 

6 

»  12 

... 

... 

... 

II     9 

2 

„  19 
„  26-28 

;^22    10 

7 

£20  12 

6 

^17  "'6 

8 

9     3 
6     9 

4 
2 

June  2 

... 

... 

7  18 

4 

„     9-" 

>,  23 

10   14 

7 

10  14 

7 

614 

4 

6  13 
6  15 
8     6 

4 

5 
8 

»  30 
July  2 . 

9  15 

6 

A     7 

6 

5  17 

0 

6  17 

6 

„  14-16 

5  12 

7 

2  10 

0 

2  18 

6 

9     3 
617 

4 
6 

»  30- 

6  II 

Q 

2     8 

II 

2  12 

0 

Aug.  20 

6     7 

6 

2  10 

0 

2  12 

0 

... 

1 

232  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

As  to  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  it  is  still  worse  advocacy, 
because  there  is  no  area  in  the  United  Kingdom  of  equal 
size  which  would  be  manured  to  such  an  extent  as  the  area 
of  Jersey  and  Guernsey  is  by  means  of  artificial  manure. 
In  the  seventeenth  century,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  first 
edition  of  Falle's  Jersey,  published  in  1694,  the  island  "  did 
not  produce  that  quantity  as  is  necessary  for  the  use  of  the 
inhabitants,  who  must  be  supplied  from  England  in  time 
of  peace,  or  from  Dantzic  in  Poland  ".  In  The  Groans  of 
the  Inhabitants  of  Jersey^  published  in  London  in  1709,  we 
find  the  same  complaint.  And  Quayle,  who  wrote  in  181 2 
and  quoted  the  two  works  just  mentioned,  in  his  turn  com- 
plained in  these  terms :  "  The  quantity  at  this  day  raised 
is  quite  inadequate  to  their  sustenance,  apart  from  the 
garrison  "  {General  View  of  the  Agriculture  and  the  Present 
State  of  the  Islands  on  the  Coast  of  Normandy^  London,  181 5, 
p.  77).  And  he  added:  "After  making  all  allowance,  the' 
truth  must  be  told ;  the  grain  crops  are  here  foul,  in  some 
instances  execrably  so  ".  And  when  we  consult  the  modern 
writers,  Ansted,  Latham  and  Nicolle,  we  learn  that  the  soil 
is  by  no  means  rich.  It  is  decomposed  granite,  and  easily 
cultivable,  but  "  it  contains  no  organic  matter  besides  what 
man  has  put  into  it ". 

This  is  certainly  the  opinion  any  one  will  come  to  if  he 
only  visits  thoroughly  the  island  and  looks  attentively  to  its 
soil — to  say  nothing  of  the  Quenvais  where,  in  Quayle's  time, 
there  was  "  an  Arabian  desert "  of  sands  and  hillocks  cover- 
ing about  seventy  acres  (p.  24),  with  a  little  better  but  still 
very  poor  soil  in  the  north  and  west  of  it.  The  fertility  of 
the  soil  has  entirely  been  made,  first,  by  the  vraic  (sea-weeds), 
upon  which  the  inhabitants  have  maintained  communal 
rights;  later  on,  by  considerable  shipments  of  manure,  in 
addition  to  the  manure  of  the  very  considerable  living  stock 
which  is  kept  in  the  island;  and  finally,  by  an  admirably 
good  cultivation  of  the  soil. 

Much  more  than  sunshine  and  good  soil,  it  was  the  condi- 
tions of  land-tenure,  and  the  low  taxation  which  contributed 
to  the  remarkable  development  of  agriculture  in  Jersey. 
First  of  all,  the  people  of  the  Isles  know  but  little  of  the 


APPKNDIX.  233 

tax-collector.  While  the  English  pay,  in  taxes,  an  average 
of  50s.  per  head  of  population;  while  the  French  peasant 
is  over-burdened  with  taxes  of  all  imaginable  descriptions, 
and  the  Milanese  peasant  has  to  give  to  the  Treasury  full 
30  per  cent,  of  his  income — all  taxes  paid  in  the  Channel 
Islands  amount  to  but  los.  per  head  in  the  town  parishes 
and  to  much  less  than  that  in  the  country  parishes.  Besides, 
of  indirect  taxes,  none  are  known  but  the  2s.  6d.  paid  for 
each  gallon  of  imported  spirits  and  pd.  per  gallon  of  im- 
ported wine. 

As  to  the  conditions  of  land-tenure,  the  inhabitants  have 
happily  escaped  the  action  of  Roman  Law,  and  they  continue 
to  live  under  the  coutumier  de  Normandie  (the  old  Norman 
common  law).  Accordingly,  more  than  one-half  of  the 
territory  is  owned  by  those  who  themselves  till  the  soil; 
there  is  no  landlord  to  watch  the  crops  and  to  raise  the  rent 
before  the  farmer  has  ripened  the  fruit  of  his  improvements ; 
there  is  nobody  to  charge  so  much  for  each  cart-load  of 
sea-weeds  or  sand  taken  to  the  fields;  every  one  takes  the 
amount  he  likes,  provided  he  cuts  the  weeds  at  a  certain 
season  of  the  year,  and  digs  out  the  sand  at  a  distance  of 
sixty  yards  from  the  high-water  mark.  Those  who  buy  land 
for  cultivation  can  do  so  without  becoming  enslaved  to  the 
money-lender.  One-fourth  part  only  of  the  permanent  rent 
which  the  purchaser  undertakes  to  pay  is  capitalised  and  has 
to  be  paid  down  on  purchase  (often  less  than  that),  the 
remainder  being  a  perpetual  rent  in  wheat  which  is  valued 
in  Jersey  at  50  to  54  sous  de  France  per  cabot.  To  seize 
property  for  debt  is  accompanied  with  such  difficulties  that  it 
is  seldom  resorted  to  (Quayle's  General  View,  pp.  41-46). 
Conveyances  of  land  are  simply  acknowledged  by  both  parties 
on  oath,  and  cost  nearly  nothing.  And  the  laws  of  inheri- 
tance are  such  as  to  preserve  the  homestead  notwithstand- 
ing the  debts  that  the  father  may  have  run  into  (ibid.,  pp. 
35-41). 

After  having  shown  how  small  are  the  farms  in  the  islands 
(from  twenty  to  five  acres,  and  very  many  less  than  that) — 
there  being  "  less  than  100  farms  in  either  island  that  exceed 
twenty-five  acres;  and  of  these  only  about  half  a  dozen  in 


234 


FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 


Jersey   exceed    fifty    acres " — Messrs.    Ansted,    Latham    and 
Nicolle  remark:  — 

"  In  no  place  do  we  find  so  happy  and  so  contented  a 
country  as  in  the  Channel  Islands.  .  .  ."  "  The  system  of 
land-tenure  has  also  contributed  in  no  small  degree  to  their 
prosperity.  .  .  ."  "  The  purchaser  becomes  the  absolute 
owner  of  the  property  and  his  position  cannot  be  touched 
so  long  as  the  interest  of  these  [wheat]  rents  be  paid.  He 
cannot  be  compelled,  as  in  the  case  of  mortgage,  to  refund 
the  principal.  The  advantages  of  such  a  system  are  too  patent 
to  need  any  further  allusion**  {The  Channel  Islands^  third 
edition,  revised  by  E.  Toulmin  Nicolle,  p.  401 ;  see  also  p. 

443-) 

The  following  will  better  show  how  the  cultivable  area  is 
utilised  in  Jersey:  — 


{Wheat 
Barley  and  here 
Oats  and  rye 
Beans  and  peas . 
r  Potatoes     . 
J  Turnips  and  swedes 
*    I  Mangolds  . 

l^Other  green  crops 
Clover,     sainfoin      and  fFor  hay 

grasses  under  rotation  \Not  for  hay        , 

Permanent    pasture    or  T  For  hay      .         . 

grass  \Notforhay        • 


Com  crops 


Green  crops  . 


1893. 

1894. 

Acres. 

Acres 

.   1526 

1709 

.    log 

113 

.   286 

499 

12 

16 

.  759«* 

7007 

.   126 

III 

.   219 

232 

.   382 

447 

.  2604 

2842 

.  2563 

2208 

.   989 

1117 

.  3120 

3057 

21,428    21,252 


In  1889  there  were  under :  — 

Acres. 

Small  fi-uit 2487 

Orchards 156 

Market  gardens         ........  83 

Nursery  gardens .  3° 

Living  Stock. 

1893.  1894. 

Horses  used  solely  for  agriculture        .        ,         .     2300  2252 

Unbroken  horses 103  83 

Mares  solely  for  breeding 14  16 

Horses 2417  2351 


APPENDIX.  235 

1893.  1894. 

C0W8  and  heifers  in  milk  or  in  calf      ,         •         .     7004  6709 

Other  cattle  :— 

Two  years  or  more 760  864 

One  year  to  two  years .         ,         .         ,         ,     2397  2252 

Less  than  one  year       .        .        ,        ,         .     2489  2549 

Total  cattle 12,650  12,374 

Sheep,  all  ^ges 335  332 

Pigs,  including  sows  for  breeding        .         .         .     5587  6021 


Exports, 

1887.  1888.  1889. 

Bulls 102  100  92 

Cows  and  heifers 1395  1639  1629 


Potatoes  exported : — 

Ton».  ^ 

^^f7 50.670  434,907 

looo 60,527  242,110 

1889 52,700  264,153 

1890 54,110  293,681 

1891 66,840  487,642 

'^92 66,332  376,535 

1893 57.762        327,366 

1894 60,605        462,895 

The  areas  under  potatoes  having  been  for  the  last  two 
years  respectively  7599  and  7007  acres,  the  export  value 
fer  acre  attained  £^2*]  6s.  in  1893,  and  ;£66  is.  in  1894. 

As  regards  greenhouse  culture,  a  friend  of  mine,  who  has 
worked  as  a  gardener  in  Jersey,  has  collected  for  me  various 
information  relative  to  the  productivity  of  culture  under  glass. 
Out  of  it  the  following  may  be  taken  as  a  perfectly  reliable 
illustration,  in  addition  to  those  given  in  the  text:  — 

Mr.  B.'s  greenhouse  has  a  length  of  300  feet  and  a  width 
of  18  feet,  which  makes  5400  square  feet,  out  of  which  900 
square  feet  are  under  the  passage  in  the  middle.  The  cul- 
tivable area  is  thus  4500  square  feet.  There  are  no  brick 
walls,  but  brick  pillars  and  boards  are  used  for  front  walls. 
Hot  water  heating  is  provided,  but  is  only  used  occasionally, 
to  keep  off  the  frosts  in  winter — the  crops  being  early  po- 
tatoes (which  require  no  heating),  followed  by  tomatoes. 
The  latter  are  Mr.  B.'s  speciality.  Catch  crops  of  radishes, 
etc.,  are  taken.     The  cost  of  the  greenhouse,  without  the 


236  FIELDS,   FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

heating  apparatus,  is  los.  per  running  foot  of  greenhouse, 
which  makes  ;£i5o  for  one-eighth  of  an  acre  under  glass,  or 
a  little  less  than  yd.  per  glass-roofed  square  foot. 

The  crops  are :  potatoes,  four  cabots  per  perch,  i.e.j  three- 
quarters  of  a  ton  of  early  potatoes  from  the  greenhouse ;  and 
tomatoes,  in  the  culture  of  which  Mr.  B.  attains  extraordinary 
results.  He  puts  in  only  1000  plants,  thus  giving  to  his  plants 
more  room  than  is  usually  given;  and  he  cultivates  a  corru- 
gated variety  which  gives  very  heavy  crops  but  does  not  fetch 
the  same  prices  as  the  smooth  varieties.  In  1896  his  crop 
was  four  tons  of  tomatoes,  and  so  it  would  have  been  in 
1897 — each  plant  giving  an  average  of  twenty  pounds  of  fruit, 
while  the  usual  crop  is  from  eight  to  twelve  pounds  per 
plant. 

The  total  crop  was  thus  four  and  three-quarter  tons  of  vege- 
tables, to  which  the  catch  crops  must  be  added — thus  corre- 
sponding to  85,000  lb.  per  acre  (over  90,000  lb.  with  the  catch 
crops).  I  again  omit  the  money  returns,  and  only  mention 
that  the  expenditure  for  fuel  and  manure  was  about  ;£io  a 
year,  and  that  the  Jersey  average  is  three  men,  each  working 
fifty-five  hours  a  week  (ten  hours  a  day),  for  each  acre  under 
glass. 


K. — Planted  Wheat. 

The  Rothamsted  Challenge* 

Sir  A.  Cotton  delivered,  in  1893,  before  the  Balloon  Society, 
a  lecture  on  agriculture,  in  which  lecture  he  warmly  advocated 
deep  cultivation  and  planting  the  seeds  of  wheat  wide  apart. 
He  published  it  later  on  as  a  pamphlet  {Lecture  on  Agri- 
culture, 2nd  edition,  with  Appendix.  Dorking,  1893).  He 
obtained,  for  the  best  of  his  sort  of  wheat,  an  average  of 
"  fifty-five  ears  per  plant,  with  three  oz.  of  grain  of  fair 
quality — perhaps  sixty-three  lbs.  per  bushel"  (p.  10).  This 
corresponded  to  ninety  bushels  per  acre — that  is,  his  result 
was  very  similar  to  those  obtained  at  the  Tomblaine  and 
Capelle  agricultural  stations  by  Grandeau  and  F.  Desspr^z, 
whose  work  seems  not  to  be  known  to  Sir  A.  Cotton.     True, 


APPENDIX.  237 

Sir  A.  Cotton's  experiments  were  not  conducted,  or  rather 
were  not  reported,  in  a  thoroughly  scientific  way.  But  the 
more  desirable  it  would  have  been,  either  to  contradict  or  to 
confirm  his  statements  by  experiments  carefully  conducted 
at  some  experimental  agricultural  station.  This  is,  in  fact, 
what  was  expected  from  the  veteran  head  of  the  Rothamsted 
experimental  farm.  Sir  John  Lawes,  even  though  the  author  of 
the  pamphlet  may  have  been  hard  upon  the  general  lines 
followed  in  the  Rothamsted  experiments.  Sir  John  Lawes 
took,  however,  another  course,  and  inserted  in  the  Echo  a 
letter  (reproduced  in  an  Appendix  to  Sir  A.  Cotton's  lecture), 
in  which  we  read  the  following :  — 

"  There  are,  obviously,  two  important  questions  to  consider, 
first — whether  so  much  as  from  100  to  120  bushels  of  wheat 
can  be  grown  per  acre  on  ordinary  arable  land?  And 
secondly,  whether,  if  a  crop  of  this  magnitude  can  be  grown, 
it  can  be  done  at  a  cost  which  will  give  profit  to  the  farmer? 
If  Sir  A.  Cotton,  or  any  one  else,  will  grow  1000  bushels  on 
ten  acres  of  fairly  average  wheat  land,  spending  as  much  as 
he  likes  on  the  cultivation,  I  will  give  him  £^2^0.  Further, 
in  order  to  ascertain  whether  our  country  can  grow  suflScient 
wheat  to  feed  our  population,  and  even,  perhaps,  for  export 
besides,  upon  from  2,000,000  to  3,000,000  acres,  I  will  give 
^1000  to  Sir  A.  Cotton,  or  any  one  else,  who  will  grow  100 
bushels  of  wheat  per  acre,  on  ten  separate  acres  of  wheat  land^ 
one  in  each  of  the  ten  English  counties  growing  the  largest 
acreage  of  wheat  at  the  present  time ;  the  cost  of  production 
l)eing  less  than  the  value  of  the  crop,  so  as  to  prove  that 
such  crops  could  be  grown  profitably  by  our  farmers." 

I  reprint  this  letter  almost  in  full  (italics  are  mine)  because 
I  have  already  had  letters  from  correspondents,  and  seen 
public  aflBrmations  to  the  effect  that  Sir  John  Lawes  had 
offered  ;£iooo  to  the  person  who  would  grow  100  bushels 
to  the  acre,  but  that  no  one  had  answered  his  challenge. 
Every  one  may  see  now  that  actually  no  such  challenge  has 
ever  been  made. 

The  fact  is  this.  All  Rothamsted  experiments  were 
carried  on  on  plots  of  two-thirds  and  one-third  of  an  acre. 
And,   from   experiments   on   such   a  scale,   the   far-reaching 


238  FIELDS,    FACTORIES  AND  WORKSHOPS. 

conclusion  in  agriculture  as  to  the  limits  of  profitable  manur- 
ing was  arrived  at  at  Rothamsted.  The  highest  average  crop 
ever  attained  at  Rothamsted  on  such  plots,  by  any  amount  of 
manuring,  was  thirty-six  and  a  quarter  bushels,  and  the 
maximum  crop  obtained  in  the  best  season  was  fifty-six 
bushels.  Now  Sir  A.  Cotton  claims  that  as  much  as  from 
80  to  100  bushels  to  the  acre  can  be  obtained  by  means 
of  deep  cultivation  and  planting  wide  apart  in  addition  to 
proper  manuring,  that  is,  nearly  three  times  as  much  as  the 
Rothamsted  average  was  for  the  best-manured  plots.  The 
only  fair  challenge  which  could  be  made  with  reference  to 
such  an  assertion  would  be,  in  my  opinion,  to  propose  to  grow 
an  average  of  80  or  100  bushels  (instead  of  the  Rotham- 
sted thirty-six  and  a  quarter)  for  several  years  in  succession 
(bad  and  good  seasons)  on  plots  of  the  same  size  as  the  Rotham- 
sted plots f  i.e.,  one-third  and  two-thirds  of  an  acre;  under 
the  condition,  of  course,  that  full  account  be  kept,  as  it  was 
at  Rothamsted,  of  the  manure  used  and  the  labour  required. 
But  such  a  challenge  was  not  made,  and  it  was  proposed, 
instead,  to  grow  1000  bushels  on  ten  acres,  in  ten  different 
counties,  in  the  second  part  of  the  challenge.  To  make  a 
challenge  under  such  conditions — Sir  John  Lawes  must  well 
know  it  himself — amounts  to  no  challenge  at  all.  Let  us 
hope,  however,  that  some  day  the  experiments  of  Hallett, 
Cotton,  Grandeau  and  Dessprfez  will  be  repeated  Jit  Rotham- 
sted as  well,  and  that  Sir  John  Lawes  will  give  them  as 
brilUant  a  confirmation  as  he  gave  some  time  ago  to  Hell- 
riegel's  work  on  nitrification. 


L. —  Replanted  Wheat. 

A  few  words  on  this  method  which  now  claims  the  atten- 
tion of  the  experimental  stations  may  perhaps  not  be  useless. 

In  Japan,  rice  is  always  treated  in  this  way.  It  is  treated 
as  our  gardeners  treat  lettuce  and  cabbage;  that  is,  it  is  let 
first  to  germinate ;  then  it  is  sown  in  special  warm  corners, 
well  inundated  with  water  and  protected  from  the  birds  by 
strings  drawn  over  the  ground.     Thirty- five  to  fifty-five  days 


APPENDIX.  239 

later,  the  young  plants,  now  fully  developed  and  possessed 
of  a  thick  network  of  rootlets,  are  replanted,  in  the  open 
ground.  In  this  way  the  Japanese  obtain  from  twenty  to 
thirty-two  bushels  of  dressed  rice  to  the  acre  in  the  poor 
provinces,  forty  bushels  in  the  better  ones,  and  from  sixty  to 
sixty-seven  bushels  in  the  best  lands.  The  average,  in  six 
rice  growing  states  of  North  America,  is  at  the  same  time  only 
nine  and  a  half  bushels.* 

In  China,  replanting  is  also  in  general  use,  and  conse- 
quently the  idea  has  been  circulated  in  France  by  M.  Eugene 
Simon  and  the  late  M.  Toubeau,  that  replanted  wheat  could 
be  made  a  powerful  means  of  increasing  the  crops  in  Western 
Europe,  t  So  far  as  I  know,  the  idea  has  not  yet  been  sub- 
mitted to  a  practical  test ;  but  when  one  thinks  of  the  remark- 
able results  obtained  by  Hallett's  method  of  planting;  of 
what  the  market  gardeners  obtain  by  replanting  once  and 
even  twice ;  and  of  how  rapidly  the  work  of  planting  is  done 
by  market  gardeners  in  Jersey,  one  must  agree  that  in  re- 
planted wheat  we  have  a  new  opening  worthy  of  the  most 
careful  consideration.  Experiments  have  not  yet  been  made 
in  this  direction ;  but  Prof.  Grandeau,  whose  opinion  I  have 
asked  on  this  subject,  wrote  to  me  that  he  believes  the 
method  must  have  a  great  future.  Practical  market  gardeners 
(Paris  maraicher)  whose  opinion  I  have  asked,  see,  of  course, 
nothing  extravagant  in  that  idea. 

With  plants  yielding  1000  grains  each — and  in  the  Capelle 
experiment  they  yielded  an  average  of  600  grains — the  yearly 
wheat-food  of  one  individual  man  (5.65  bushels  or  265  lbs.), 
which  is  represented  by  from  5,000,000  to  5,500,000  grains, 
could  be  grown  on  a  space  of  250  square  yards;  while  for 
an  experienced  hand  replanting  would  represent  no  more  than 
ten  to  twelve  hours'  work.     With  a  proper  machine-tool,  the 


*  Dr.  M.  Fesca,  Bettrdge  zur  Kenntniss  der  Japanesischen  Landwirth- 
schaft.  Part  ii.,  p.  33  (Berlin,  1893).  The  economy  in  seeds  is  also  con- 
siderable. While  in  Italy  250  kilogrammes  to  the  hectare  are  sown,  and 
160  kilogrammes  in  South  Carolina,  the  Japanese  use  only  sixty  kilo- 
grammes for  the  same  area.  (Semler,  Tropische  Agrikultur,  Bd.  iii., 
pp.  20-28.) 

t  Eugene  Simon,  La  cite  chinoise  (translated  into  English) ;  Toubeau^ 
La  repartition  metrique  des  impots,  2  vols..  Pwis  (Guillaumin),  1880, 


240  FIELDS,   FACTORIES   AND  WORKSHOPS. 

work  could  probably  be  very  much  reduced.  In  Japan,  two 
men  and  two  women  plant  with  rice  three-quarters  of  an 
acre  in  one  day  (Ronna,  Les  Irrigations^  vol.  iii.,  1890,  p.  67 
seq^.  That  means  (Fesca,  Japanesische  Landwirthschaft^  p. 
33)  from  33,000  to  66,000  plants,  or,  let  us  say,  a  minimum 
of  8250  plants  a  day  for  one  person.  The  Jersey  gardeners 
plant  from  600  (inexperienced)  to  1000  plants  per  hour  (ex- 
perienced). 


M. — Imports  of  Vegetables  to  the  United  Kingdom. 

That  the  land  in  this  country  is  not  sufficiently  utilised  for 
market  gardening,  and  that  the  largest  portion  of  the  vege- 
tables which  are  imported  from  abroad  could  be  grown  in  this 
country,  has  been  said  over  and  over  again  within  the  last 
few  years. 

^It  is  certain  that  considerable  improvements  have  taken 
place  lately — the  area  under  market  gardens,  and  especially 
the  area  under  glass  for  the  growth  of  fruit  and  vegetables, 
having  largely  been  increased  of  late.  Thus,  instead  of 
38,957  acres,  which  were  given  to  market-gardening  in  Great 
Britain  in  1875,  there  were,  in  1894,  88,210  acres,  exclusive 
of  vegetable  crops  on  farms,  given  to  that  purpose  iXht 
Gardener'' s  Chronicle,  20th  April,  1895,  p.  483).  But  that 
increase  remains  a  trifle  in  comparison  with  similar  increases 
in  France,  Belgium,  and  the  United  States.  In  France,  the 
area  given  to  market  gardening  was  estimated  in  1892  by  M. 
Baltet  {V horticulture  dans  les  cinq  parties  du  monde,  Paris, 
Hachette,  1895)  at  1,075,000  acres — four  times  more,  in  pro- 
portion to  the  cultivable  area,  than  in  this  country,  and  the 
most  remarkable  of  it  is  that  considerable  tracts  of  land 
formerly  treated  as  uncultivable  have  been  reclaimed  for  the 
purposes  of  market  gardening  as  also  of  fruit  growing. 

As  things  stand  now  in  this  country,  we  see  that  very  large 
quantities  of  the  commonest  vegetables,  each  of  which  could 
be  grown  in  this  country,  are  imported. 

Lettuces  are  imported — not  only  from  the  Azores  or  from 
the  south  of  France,  but  they  continue  until  June  to  be  im- 
ported from  France,  where  they  are  mostly  grown — not  in 


APPENDIX.  241  • 

the  open  air,  but  in  frames.  Early  cucumbers,  also  grown  in 
frames,  are  largely  imported  from  Holland,  and  are  sold  so 
cheaply  that  many  English  gardeners  have  ceased  to  grow 
them.*  Even  beetroot  and  pickling  cabbage  are  imported 
from  Holland ;  and  while  onions  were  formerly  largely  grown 
in  this  country,  we  see  that  in  1894,  5,288,512  bushels  of 
onions,  j£76$,o4g  worth,  were  imported  from  Belgium  (chief 
importer),  Germany,  Holland,  France,  and  so  on. 

Again,  that  early  potatoes  should  be  imported  from  the 
Azores  and  the  south  of  France  is  quite  natural.  It  is  not 
so  natural,  however,  that  more  than  50,000  tons  of  potatoes 
(58,060  tons,  ;£52i,i4i  worth,  on  the  average  during  the 
years  189 1-4)  should  be  imported  from  the  Channel  Islands, 
because  there  are  hundreds  if  not  thousands  of  acres  in  South 
Devon,  and  most  probably  in  other  parts  of  the  south  coast 
too,  where  early  potatoes  could  be  grown  equally  well.  But 
besides  the  88,200  tons  of  early  potatoes  (;£7 10,586  worth) 
which  are  imported  to  this  country,  no  less  than  54,100  tons 
of  late  potatoes,  for  which  ;£44 1,300  are  paid  every  year, 
are  imported  from  Holland,  Germany  and  Belgium.  And, 
moreover,  this  country  imported,  during  the  same  three  years, 
all  sorts  of  green  vegetables,  for  the  sum  of  ;£i,o27,4ii  (as 
against  ^£467, 290  in  1885)  from  different  countries,!  while 
thousands  of  acres  lie  idle,  and  the  country  population  is 
driven  to  the  cities  in  search  of  work,  without  finding  it. 

Every  one  knows  how  well  potatoes  succeed  in  this  country, 
and  what  admirable  sorts  of  potatoes  have  been  bred  by  the 
British  growers.  But  the  rent  and  the  middleman  absorb 
the  best  profits  of  the  grower.  I  could  produce  striking 
facts  to  prove  this  last  assertion  concerning  the  middleman ; 
but  similar  facts  having  already  been  produced  in  heaps,  it 
would  be  useless  to  swell  by  more  figures  an  evidence  al- 
ready overwhelming.  I 

•  The  Gardener's  Chronicle,  20th  April,  1895,  p.  483. 

t  Ibid. 

X  Cf.  W.  Bear's  British  Farmer  and  His  Competitors,  p.  151. 


16 


2/^2  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 


N. — Market  Gardening  in  Belgium. 

In  1885  the  superficies  given  to  market  gardening  in  Bel- 
gium was  99,600  acres.  Now,  a  Belgian  professor  of  agri- 
culture, who  has  kindly  supplied  me  with  notes  on  this 
subject,  writes:  — 

"  The  area  has  considerably  increased,  and  I  believe  it  can 
be  taken  at  112,000  acres  (45,000  hectares),  if  not  more." 
And  further  on :  "  Rents  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  big 
towns,  Antwerp,  Li^ge,  Ghent  and  Brussels,  attain  as  much 
as  ;£5  i6s.  and  £&  per  acre ;  the  cost  of  instalment  is  from 
;£i3  to  £'^S  V^^  acre;  the  yearly  cost  of  manure,  which  is 
the  chief  expense,  attains  from  ;£8  to  jQi6  per  acre  the  first 
year,  and  then  from  £^  to  ;£8  every  year".  The  gardens 
are  of  the  average  size  of  two  and  a  half  acres,  and  in  each 
garden  from  200  to  400  frames  are  used.  About  the  Bel- 
gian market-gardeners  the  same  remark  must  be  made  as 
has  been  made  concerning  the  French  maratchers.  They 
work  awfully  hard,  having  to  pay  extravagant  rents,  and  to  lay 
money  aside,  with  the  hope  of  some  day  being  able  to  buy 
a  piece  of  land,  and  to  get  rid  of  the  blood-sucker  who 
absorbs  so  much  of  their  money  returns;  having  moreover 
every  year  to  buy  more  and  more  frames  in  order  to  obtain 
their  produce  earlier  and  earlier,  so  as  to  fetch  higher  prices 
for  it,  they  work  like  slaves.  But  it  must  be  remembered 
that  in  order  to  obtain  the  same  amount  of  produce  under 
glass,  in  greenhouses,  the  work  of  three  men  only,  working 
fifty-five  hours  a  week,  is  required  in  Jersey  for  cultivating  one 
acre  of  land  under  glass. 


O. — Petty  Trades  in  the  Lyons  Region, 

The  neighbourhoods  of  St.  Etienne  are  a  great  centre  for 
all  sorts  of  industries,  and  among  them  the  petty  trades  oc- 
cupy an  important  place.  Iron  works  and  coal  mines  with 
their  high  smoking  chimneys ;  noisy  manufactories ;  roads 
blackened  by  coal,  and  a  poor  vegetation,  give  the  country 
the  well-known  aspects  of  the  "Black  Country".     In  certain 


APPENDIX.  243 

towns,  such  as  St.  Chamond;  one  finds  numbers  of  big  fac- 
tories in  which  thousands  of  women  are  employed  in  the 
fabrication  of  passementerie.  But  side  by  side  with  the  great 
industry  the  petty  trades  also  maintain  a  high  development. 
Thus  we  have  first  the  fabrication  of  silk  ribbons,  in  which 
no  less  than  50,000  men  and  women  were  employed  in  the 
year  1885.  Only  3000  or  4000  looms  were  located  then  in 
the  factories;  while  the  remainder — that  is,  from  1200  to 
1400  looms — belonged  to  the  workers  themselves,  both  at 
St.  Etienne  and  in  the  surrounding  country.*  As  a  rule  the 
women  and  the  girls  spin  the  silk  or  make  the  winding  off, 
while  the  father  with  his  sons  weave  the  ribbons.  I  saw 
these  small  workshops  in  the  suburbs  of  St.  Etienne,  where 
complicated  ribbons  (with  interwoven  addresses  of  the  manu- 
facture), as  well  as  ribbons  of  high  artistic  finish,  were  woven 
in  three  to  four  looms,  while  in  the  next  room  the  wife  pre- 
pared the  dinner  and  attended  to  household  work. 

There  was  a  time  when  the  wages  were  high  in  the  ribbon 
trade  (reaching  over  ten  francs  a  day),  and  M.  Euvert  wrote 
me  that  half  of  the  suburban  houses  of  St.  Etienne  had  been 
built  by  the  passementiers  themselves.  But  the  affairs  took  a 
very  gloomy  aspect  when  a  crisis  broke  out  in  1884.  No 
orders  were  forthcoming,  and  the  ribbon  weavers  had  to  live 
on  casual  earnings.  All  their  economies  were  soon  spent. 
■*How  many,"  M.  Euvert  wrote,  "have  been  compelled  to 
sell  for  a  few  hundred  francs  the  loom  for  which  they  had 
paid  as  many  thousand  francs."  What  an  effect  this  crisis 
has  had  on  the  trade  I  could  not  say,  as  I  have  no  recent 
information  about  this  region.  Very  probably  a  great 
number  of  the  ribbon  weavers  have  emigrated  to  St.  Etienne, 
where  artistic  weaving  is  continued,  while  the  cheapest  sorts 
of  ribbon  must  be  made  in  factories. 

The  manufacture  of  arms  occupies  from  5000  to  6000 
workers,  half  of  whom  are  in  St.  Etienne,  and  the  remainder 

•  I  am  indebted  for  these  figures  and  the  following  information  to  M. 
V.  Euvert,  President  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  of  St.  Etienne,  who 
sent  me,  while  I  was  in  the  Clairvaux  prison,  in  April,  1885,  a  most 
valuable  sketch  of  the  various  industries  of  the  region,  m  reply  to  a  letter 
of  mine.  I  avail  myself  of  the  opportunity  for  expressing  to  M.  Euvert 
my  belt  thanks  for  bis  courtesy. 


244  FIELDS,  FACTORIES  AND   WORKSHOPS. 

in  the  neighbouring  county.  All  work  is  done  in  small  work- 
shops, save  in  the  great  arm  factory  of  the  State,  which 
sometimes  will  employ  from  10,000  to  15,000  persons,  and 
sometimes  only  a  couple  of  thousand  men. 

Another  important  trade  in  the  same  region  is  the  manu- 
facture of  hardware,  which  is  all  made  in  small  workshops, 
in  the  neighbourhoods  of  St.  Etienne,  Le  Chambon,  Firminy, 
Rive  de  Giers,  and  St.  Bonnet  le  Chlteau.  The  work  is 
pretty  regular,  but  the  earnings  are  low  as  a  rule.  And  yet 
the  peasants  continue  to  keep  to  those  trades,  as  they  cannot 
go  on  without  some  industrial  occupation  during  part  of  the 
year. 

The  yearly  production  of  silk  stuffs  in  France  attained  no 
less  than  7,558,000  kilogrammes  in  1881;*  and  most  of  the 
5,000,000  to  6,000,000  kilogrammes  of  raw  silk  which  were 
manufactured  in  the  Lyons  region  were  manufactured  by 
hand.t  Twenty  years  before,  i.e.,  about  1865,  there  were 
only  from  6000  to  8000  power-looms,  and  when  we  take  into 
account  both  the  prosperous  period  of  the  Lyons  silk  industry 
about  1876,  and  the  crisis  which  it  underwent  in  1880-6,  we 
cannot  but  wonder  about  the  slowness  of  the  transformation 
of  the  industry.  Such  is  also  the  opinion  of  the  President 
of  the  Lyons  Chamber  of  Commerce,  who  wrote  me  that  the 
domain  of  the  power-loom  is  increased  every  year,  "  by  in- 
cluding new  kinds  of  stuffs,  which  formerly  were  reputed  as 
unfeasible  in  the  power-looms ;  but,"  he  added,  "  the  trans- 
formation of  small  workshops  into  factories  still  goes  on  so 
slowly  that  the  total  number  of  power-looms  reaches  only 
from  20^000  to  25,000  out  of  an  aggregate  of  from  100,000 
to  110,000  ". 

The  leading  features  of  the  Lyons  silk  industry  are  the 
following :  — 

The  preparatory  work — winding  off,  warping  and  so  on — 

*  7*558,000  kilogrammes  in  1881,  as  against  5,134,000  kilogrammes  in 
1872.     youmal  de  la  SociHi  de  Statistique  de  Paris,  September,  1883. 

1 1  take  these  figures  from  a  detailed  letter  which  the  President  of  the 
Lyons  Chamber  of  Commerce  kindly  directed  to  me  in  April,  1885,  to 
Clairvaux,  in  answer  to  my  inquiries  about  the  subject.  I  avail  myself 
of  this  opportunity  for  addressing  to  him  my  best  thanks  for  his  most 
interesting  communication. 


APPENDIX.  245 

is  mostly  made  in  small  workshops,  chiefly  at  Lyons,  with 
only  a  few  workshops  of  the  kind  in  the  villages.  Dyeing 
and  finishing  are  also  made,  of  course,  in  great  factories, 
a.-d  it  is  especially  in  dyeing,  which  occupies  4000  to  5000 
hands,  that  the  Lyons  manufacturers  have  attained  their 
highest  repute.  Not  only  silks  are  dyed  there,  but  also 
cottons  and  wools,  and  not  only  for  France,  but  also  to  some 
extent  for  London,  Manchester,  Vienna,  and  even  Moscow. 
It  is  also  in  this  branch  that  the  best  machines  have  to  be 
mentioned.* 

As  to  the  weaving,  it  is  made,  as  we  just  saw,  on  from 
20,000  to  25,000  power-looms  and  from  75,000  to  90,000 
hand-looms,  which  partly  are  at  Lyons  (from  15,000  to  18,000 
hand-looms  in  1885)  and  chiefly  in  the  villages.  The  work- 
shops, where  one  might  formerly  find  several  compagnons 
employed  by  one  master,  have  a  tendency  to  disappear,  the 
workshops  mostly  having  now  but  from  two  to  three  hand- 
looms,  on  which  the  father,  the  mother  and  the  children  are 
working  together.  In  each  house,  in  each  storey  of  the  Croix 
Rousse,  you  find  until  now  such  small  workshops.  The 
fabricant  gives  the  general,  indications  as  to  the  kind  of 
itufF  he  desires  to  be  woven,  and  his  draughtsmen  design  the 
pattern,  but  it  is  the  workman  himself  who  must  find  the  way 
to  weave  in  threads  of  all  colours  the  patterns  sketched  on 
paper.  He  thus  continually  creates  something  new ;  and 
many  improvements  and  discoveries  have  been  made  by 
workers  whose  very  names  remain  unknown.! 

The  Lyons  weavers  have  retained  until  now  the  character 
of  being  the  elite  of  their  trade  in  higher  artistic  work  in  silk 
stufifs.  The  finest,  really  artistic  brocades,  satins  and  velvets, 
are  woven  in  the  smallest  workshops,  where  one  or  two  looms 
only  are  kept.  Unhappily  the  unsettled  character  of  the 
demand  for  such  a  high  style  of  work  is  often  a  cause  of 
misery  amongst  them.     In  former  times,  when  the  orders  for 

*  La  fahrique  lyonnaise  de  soieries.  Son  passi,  son  present.  Imprim^ 
par  ordre  de  la  Chambre  de  Co^nmerce  de  Lyon,  1873.  (Published  in 
connection  with  the  Vienna  Exhibition.) 

+  Marius  Morand,  U organisation  ouvriere  de  la  fabrique  lyonnaise 
paper  read  before  the  Association  Fran9aisc  pour  I'avancement  del 
Sciences,  in  1873. 


246  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND   WORKSHOPS. 

higher  sorts  of  silks  became  scarce,  the  Lyons  weavers  re- 
sorted to  the  manufacture  of  stuffs  of  lower  qualities : 
■foulards,  crepes,  tulles,  of  which  Lyons  had  the  monopoly 
in  Europe.  But  now  the  commoner  kinds  of  goods  are 
manufactured  by  the  million,  on  the  one  side  by  the  fac- 
tories of  Lyons,  Saxony,  Russia  and  Great  Britain,  and  on  the 
other  side  by  peasants  in  the  neighbouring  departments  of 
France,  as  well  as  in  the  Swiss  villages  of  the  cantons  of 
Basel  and  Zurich,  and  in  the  villages  of  the  Rhine  provinces, 
Italy  and  Russia. 

The  emigration  of  the  French  silk  industry  from  the 
towns  to  the  villages  began  long  ago,  i.e.,  about  1817,  but  it 
was  especially  in  the  sixties  that  this  movement  took  a  great 
development.  About  the  year  1872  nearly  90,000  hand-looms 
were  scattered,  not  only  in  the  Rh&ne  department,  but  also 
in  those  of  Ain,  Isfere,  Loire,  Sa8ne-et-Loire,  and  even  those 
of  DrSme,  Ardfeche  and  Savoie.  Sometimes  the  looms  were 
supplied  by  the  merchants,  but  most  of  them  were  bought 
by  the  weavers  themselves,  and  it  was  especially  women  and 
girls  who  worked  on  them  at  the  hours  free  from  agriculture. 
But  already  since  1835  the  emigration  of  the  silk  industry 
from  the  city  to  the  villages  began  in  the  shape  of  great 
factories  erected  in  the  villages,  and  such  factories  continue 
to  spread  in  the  country,  making  terrible  havoc  amidst  the 
rural  populations. 

When  a  new  factory  is  built  in  a  village  it  attracts  at  once 
the  girls,  and  partly  also  the  boys  of  the  neighbouring 
peasantry.  The  girls  and  boys  are  always  happy  to  find  an 
independent  livelihood  which  emancipates  them  from  the 
control  of  the  family.  Consequently,  the  wages  of  the  fac- 
tory girls  are  extremely  low.  At  the  same  time  the  distance 
from  the  village  to  the  factory  being  mostly  great,  the  girls 
cannot  return  home  every  day,  the  less  so  as  the  hours  of 
labour  are  usually  long.  So  they  stay  all  the  week  at  the 
factory,  in  barracks,  and  they  only  return  home  on  Saturday 
evening ;  while  at  sunrise  on  Monday  a  waggon  makes  the 
tour  of  the  villages,  and  brings  them  back  to  the  factory. 
Barrack  Hfe — not  to  mention  its  moral  consequences — soon 
renders  the  girls  quite  unable  to  work  in  the  fields.     And, 


APPENDIX.  247 

when  they  are  grown  up,  they  discover  that  they  cannot  main- 
tain themselves  at  the  low  w^ages  offered  by  the  factory;  but 
they  can  no  more  return  to  peasant  life.  It  is  easy  to  see  what 
havoc  the  factory  is  thus  doing  in  the  villages,  and  how  un- 
settled is  its  very  existence,  based  upon  the  very  low  wages 
offered  to  country  girls.  It  destroys  the  peasant  home,  it 
renders  the  life  of  the  town  worker  still  more  precarious  on 
account  of  the  competition  it  makes  to  him;  and  the  trade 
itself  is  in  a  perpetual  state  of  unsettledness. 


P. — Small  Industries  at  Paris. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  enumerate  here  all  the  varieties 
of  small  industries  which  are  carried  on  at  Paris ;  nor  would 
such  an  enumeration  be  complete,  because  every  year  new  in- 
dustries are  brought  into  life.  I  therefore  will  mention  only 
a  few  of  the  most  important  industries. 

A  great  number  of  them  are  connected,  of  course,  with 
ladies'  dress.  The  confeciionsy  that  is,  the  making  of  various 
parts  of  ladies'  dress,  occupy  no  less  than  22,000  operatives 
at  Paris,  and  their  production  attains  ;£3,ooo,ooo  every  year, 
while  gowns  give  occupation  to  15,000  women,  whose  annual 
production  is  valued  at  ;£2, 400,000.  Linen,  shoes,  gloves, 
and  so  on,  are  as  many  important  branches  of  the  petty 
trades  and  the  Paris  domestic  industries,  while  one-fourth 
part  of  the  stays  which  are  sewn  in  France  (^^5 00,000  out  of 
;£2,ooo,ooo)  are  made  at  Paris. 

Engraving,  book-binding,  and  all  kinds  of  fancy  stationery, 
as  well  as  the  manufacture  of  musical  and  mathematical  in- 
struments, are  again  as  many  branches  in  which  the  Paris 
workmen  excel.  Basket-making  is  another  very  important 
item,  the  finest  sorts  only  being  made  in  Paris,  while  the 
plainest  sorts  are  made  in  the  above-mentioned  centres 
(Haute  Mame,  Aisne,  etc.).  Brushes  are  also  made  in  small 
workshops,  the  trade  being  valued  at  ;£8oo,ooo  both  at 
Paris  and  in  the  neighbouring  department  of  Oise. 

For  furniture,  there  are  at  Paris  as  many  as  4340  work- 
shops, in  which  three  or  four  operatives  per  workshop  are 


248  FIELDS,    FACTORIES   AND    WORKSHOPS. 

employed  on  the  average.  In  the  watch  trade  we  find  2000 
workshops  with  only  6000  operatives,  and  their  production, 
about  ;£ 1, 000,000,  reaches  nevertheless  nearly  one-third  part 
of  the  total  watch  production  in  France.  The  maroquinerie 
gives  the  very  high  figure  of  ;£5oo,ooo,  although  it  employs 
only  1000  persons,  scattered  in  280  workshops,  this  high  figure 
itself  testifying  to  the  high  artistic  value  of  the  Paris  leather 
fancy  goods.  The  jewelry,  both  for  articles  of  luxury,  and 
for  all  descriptions  of  cheap  goods,  is  again  one  of  the 
specialities  of  the  Paris  petty  trades ;  and  another  well-known 
speciality  is  the  fabrication  of  artificial  flowers.  Finally,  we 
must  mention  the  carriage  and  saddlery  trades,  which  are 
carried  on  in  the  small  towns  round  Paris;  the  making  of 
fine  straw  hats;  glass  cutting,  and  painting  on  glass  and 
china ;  and  numerous  workshops  for  fancy  buttons,  attire 
in  mother-of-pearl,  and  small  goods  in  horn  and  bone. 


Q. — Pettv  Trades  in  Germany. 

The  literature  of  the  small  industries  in  Germany  being 
very  bulky,  the  chief  works  upon  this  subject  may  be  found, 
either  in  full  or  reviewed,  in  Schmoller's  fahrbiicher,  and  in 
Conrad's  Sammlung  nation aUdkonomischer  und  statistischer 
Abhandlungen.  For  a  general  review  of  the  subject  and  rich 
bibliographical  indications,  SchOnberg's  V olkwirthschaftslehrCf 
vol.  ii.,  which  contains  excellent  remarks  about  the  proper 
domain  of  small  industries  (p.  401  seq.),  as  well  as  the  above- 
mentioned  publication  of  K.  Biicher  ( Untersuchungen  iiber  die 
Lage  des  Handwerks  in  Detitschland)^  will  be  found  most  valu- 
able. The  work  of  O.  Schwarz,  Die  Betriebsformen  der  modernen 
Grossindustrie  (in  Zeitschrift  fiir  Staatswissenschaft,  vol.  xxv., 
P-  535);  is  interesting  by  its  analysis  of  the  respective  ad- 
vantages of  both  the  great  and  the  small  industries,  which 
brings  the  author  to  formulate  the  following  three  factors  in 
favour  of  the  former:  (i)  economy  in  the  cost  of  motive 
power ;  (2)  division  of  labour  and  its  harmonic  organisation ; 
and  (3)  the  advantages  offered  for  the  sale  of  the  produce. 
Of  these  three  factors,  the  first  is  more  and  more  eliminated 


APPENDIX.  249 

every  year  by  the  progress  achieved  in  the  transmission  of 
power;  the  second  exists  in  small  industries  as  well,  and  to 
the  same  extent,  as  in  the  great  ones  (watchmakers,  toymakers, 
and  so  on);  so  that  only  the  third  remains  in  full  force; 
but  this  factor  as  already  mentioned  in  the  text  of  this  book, 
is  a  social  factor  which  entirely  depends  upon  the  degree  of 
development  of  the  spirit  of  association  amongst  the  pro- 
ducers. As  to  Schwarz's  figures  relative  to  the  higher  pro- 
ductivity of  great  spinning  mills  as  compared  with  smaller 
ones,  it  remains  to  be  known  whether  the  large  mills  which 
he  mentions  are  not  more  modem  than  the  small  ones,  and 
are  not  provided,  therefore,  with  better  machinery.  One 
conclusion  of  Schwarz  is,  however,  absolutely  correct:  small 
industries,  unless  they  are  engaged  in  the  production  of 
artfstic  goods,  as  is  the  case  at  Paris,  Lyons,  Warsaw,  Vienna, 
and  so  on,  can  thrive  only  in  connection  with  agriculture. 


ALPHABETICAL  INDEX. 


Aberdeen,  Gordon's  College,  igi ;  daily  schools,  192. 

Adulteration  of  manure  and  seeds,  67. 

Agassiz,  204  note. 

Agricultural  Gazette,  97  note. 

Agricultural  labourers,  numbers  in  Great  Britain,  47 ;  wages,  in  Russia, 

74  note. 
Agricultural  machinery  in  Russia,  14  ;   as  a  petty  trade,  175. 
Agriculture,  40  stq.;    additional  hands   periodically   required,   182;    in 

Belgium,  55-59,  87,  94 ;  in  the  Channel  Islands,  88-92  ;  in  China, 

102;  in  France,  53-55,  72;  in  Great  Britain,  43-53,  59;  in  Italy,  94; 

in  Japan,  102,  238 ;  in  the  United  States,  75-82 ;  tropical  (Semler's 

work),  239  note. 
Aldershot,  95. 
Alengon,  weaving,  145. 
Alsace,  spinning  mills,  224. 
American  competition,  75. 

Amiens,  industries,  143  ;  market-gardening,  108. 
Anjou,  province  of,  fruit  culture,  107. 
Annales  agronomiques,  92  note. 
Annuaire  statistique  de  la  Belgique,  56  note. 
Ansted,  The  Channel  Islands,  230,  232-234. 
Applied  science,  a  misleading  name,  208. 
Arithmetic,  present  waste  of  time  in  teaching  it,  ig6. 
Armstrong,  Sir  William,  shipbuilding  in  Japan,  28,  42. 
Art  and  handicraft,  210. 
Atwood's  machine,  197. 
Augsburg,  spinning  mills,  224. 
Australia,  34. 

Austria,  mining  and  textiles,  225. 
Austria-Hungary,  growth  of  industries,  22. 

B.,  Mr.,  greenhouse,  235. 

Backbarrow,  136. 

Baden,  spinning  mills,  224. 

Baines,  Edward,  Yorkshire,  Past  and  Present,  135. 

Baltet,  Horticulture,  etc.,  82,  104,  109,  no,  240;  in  the  United  States, 

82. 
Barfleur,  105. 

Barral,  Dictionary  of  Agriculture,  64,  93,  94. 
Basel,  silks,  36. 

Bashford,  Mr.,  greenhouses  in  Jersey,  113. 
Baudrillart,  on  the  agricultural  populations  of  Anjou,  107  ;  of  Normandy, 

144,  147. 


252  INDEX. 

Bavaria,  butter,  73  note ;  spinning  mills,  225. 

Bear,  Mr.  W.  E.,  on  Jersey  greenhouses,  114,  118;  works  and  papers 

on  Channel  Islands,  230  ;  The  British  Farmer  and  his  Competitors., 

73  note ;  article  on  wheat  growing  in  Quarterly  Review,  73  note. 
Beauclerck,  Rural  Italy,  229. 
Beetroot,  crops,  61. 
Belgium,  artisans,  172  note;   greenhouses,  grapes,  119;  land,  use  made 

of,  55;    market-gardening,  242;  petty  trades,  people  employed  if 

172. 
Berkley,  Mr.,  address  on  iron  trade  in  America,  29. 
Bevan,  Guide  to  English  Industries,  136. 
Birmingham,  gun  and  rifle  trade,  137. 
Block,  Prof.  Maurice,  i66. 
Bobbins  and  reels  made  by  hand,  139. 
Bohemia,  industries,  22. 
Boitel,  Herbages  et  Prairies  natnrelles,  93. 
Bombay,  spinning  mills,  224. 
Booth,  Charles,  138. 

Boston,  lettuce  grown  by  electric  light,  82;  technical  school,  191. 
Bovio,  industry  in  Italy,  23. 
Brain  work  and  manual  work,  184  seq. 
Bramwell,  Sir  Frederick,  187. 
Brazil,  growth  of  industries,  24. 
Breeding  of  new  cereals,  95  seq. 
Bremen,  cotton  exchange,  19. 
Brindley,  185. 

British  Iron  Trade  Association,  19,  20. 
Buecher,  Karl,  Researches  into  the  conditions  of  the  artisans  in  Germany 

162,  248. 

Canada,  efforts  made  to  promote  agriculture,  79,  80  note. 

Capclle,  experimental  station,  99,  236,  239. 

Carpenter,  Edward,  on  Sheffield  cutlery,  134. 

Carter,  breeding  of  new  cereals,  99. 

Caucasus,  silk  industry,  35  ;  petty  trades,  174. 

Chambers  of  Commerce,  25 ;  of  St.  Etienne,  243 ;   of  Lyons,  244 ;  La 

fahrique  lyonnaise  de  soieries,  245. 
Champion,  Mr.,  heavy  crops  of  beet,  61. 
Channel  Islands,  88  seq.,  230  seq.;  work  by  Ansted,  Latham  and  Nicolle, 

230-234  (see  Jersey  and  Guernsey). 
Chapman,  Vice-Consul,  24. 
Chemistry,  207  note. 

Cherbourg  and  neighbourhoods,  market-gardening,  105. 
Chicago,  lettuce  grown  by  electricity,  82;  manual  training  school,  191. 
Children,  overwork,  216. 
China,  industries,  34,  38;  rice  culture,  239. 
Clausius,  his  second  law,  208. 

Combinations  of  petty  trades'  workers,  obstacles  to,  167. 
Comb  making,  153. 

Commission,  Parliamentary,  on  depression  of  trade,  29. 
Concentrical  courses  in  schools,  194. 

Conclusions,  on  intensive  culture,  120;  of  the  book,  213  seq. 
Congo,  34. 

Conrad's  Sammlung,  248. 
Co-operative  basket  making,  152  ;  dairies,  153 ;  Wholesale  Co-operative 

Society's  Annual,  96  note. 


INDEX.  253 

Cornell  University,  190. 

Cornwall,  potatoes,  89  note. 

Cotton,  Sir  A.,  Lecture  on  Agriculture,  236 ;  Rothamsted  challenge,  236. 

Cotton  industry,  its  growth  in  different  countries,  34. 

Courtois-Gerard,  Manuel  de  culture  maraichere,  64  note,  65. 

Crisis,  industrial,  of  1886-87,  29. 

Daily  Telegraph,  correspondence  on  German  competition,  18 

Darwin,  204,  205. 

Davy,  Humphrey,  mechanical  theory  of  heat,  203. 

Dellavos,  methods  of  technical  training,  190. 

Derbyshire,  petty  trades,  136. 

Dessprer,  Fl.,  on  planted  wheat,  99,  100,  236. 

Devon,  South,  89  note. 

Division  of  labour,  i,  214. 

Dodge,  J.  R.,  American  competition,  76 ;  Annual  Report  on  Agriculture, 

76;    Fetrm  and  Factory,   preface  v.,  76;    industries  of  the   United 

States,  29. 
Du  Camp,  Maxime,  160  note. 
Dudley,  chain  makers,  136. 
Dumazet,  Ardouin,  Voyage  en  France;  agriculture,  105,  io6,  108,  109; 

petty  trades  in  France,  144,  146-149,  151,  152,  158. 
Dundee,  jute  trade,  26. 
Dybowski,  Prof.,  on  French  market-gardening,  64. 

Economical  youmeil^  236. 

Economist,  14  note,  26. 

Education,  integrated,  18S. 

Electricity,  in  the  service  of  the  petty  trades,  154,  156 ;  theory  of,  208. 

Engel,  8tatt»tical  researches,  216. 

English  Illushated  Magazine,  136  note. 

Eimarck,  204  note. 

Euvert,  V.,  industries  at  St.  Etiennc,  243  note. 

Exports  from  the  United  Kingdom,  32. 

Factories  and  fields,  217. 

Falle,  Jersey,  232. 

Fesca,  Dr.  M.,  work  on  Japanese  agriculture,  239  note,  240. 

Fitzroy,  weather  forecasts,  209. 

Flanders,  East,  agriculture,  60,  87. 

Flux,  Mr.,  position  of  United  Kingdom  in  international  trade,  226. 

Fodder  plants,  various  crops  of,  62  note. 

Food,  labour  required  tl  grow  it,  217  seq» 

Forum,  preface  vi. 

Fougires,  domestic  industries,  147. 

France,  chief  imports,  221;  growth  of  industries,  9 ;  growth  of  popula- 
tion and  of  wheat  crop  since  1789,  85  ;  land,  use  made  of,  53  ;  petty 
trades:  basket  making,  152;  combined  with  small  farming,  148; 
cottons,  146;  cutlery,  151;  drills,  145;  hardware  and  locks,  150; 
iron  goods,  150;  lace  making,  145  ;  linen  handkerchiefs,  146;  marble 
goods,  149;  numbers  of  people  employed  in,  141;  pottery,  151; 
weaving  in  hand  looms,  142,  145  ;  wood  work,  149,  150 ;  in  Brittany, 
148;  in  Niivre  and  Haute  Marne,  150;  in  Normandy,  144,  149;  in 
the  Jura  hills,  152-154;  in  the  Lyons  region,  155  seq.,  and  appendix 
O :  at  Paris,  159,  and  appendix  P. 


254  INDEX. 

Franckc,  Growth  of  Textile  Industries  in  Germany,  i8 

Fream,  Prof.  W.,  Rothamsted  Experiments,  ^. 

Fresnaye,  150. 

Fruit  exports,  from  Belgium,  109 ;  from  France,  107. 

Fruit  growing,  in  Anjou,  107  ;  near  Paris,  106 ;  in  the  valley  of  the  RhAne, 

108. 
Fulton,  207. 

Gaewernitz,  see  Schulze  Gaewernitz. 

Galerie  du  Travail,  i6o. 

Galileo,  184. 

Gardener's  Chronicle,  104,  240. 

Garola,  Prof.,  Les  ceriales,  87,  98,  229. 

Geometry,  discovery  versus  learning  by  heart,  195 ;  methods  of  teaching 

it,  190. 
Germany,  cotton   industry,  224 ;    do.,   compared  with  other  countries, 

224  ;    "  German   competition,"  20 ;    growth   of  industries,    10,  i  r ; 

machinery,   223 ;     mining  and   iron   industry,   222 ;     petty   trades, 

162-171 ;  literature  of  the  same,  appendix  Q;  potato  crops  obtained, 

93. 
Gien,  china  buttons,  151. 

Giffen,  Mr.,  position  of  United  Kingdom  in  international  trade,  32,  226. 
Girard,  Prof.  Aim6,  on  potato  growing,  92. 
Glacial  period,  204  note. 
Godwin,  83. 
Goethe,  quoted,  211. 
Goppart,  M.,  crops  of  fodder  plants,  61 ;  Manual  of  Indian  Corn  Culture, 

95- 
Gordon's  College,  191. 

Grandeau,  Prof.,  planted  wheat,  99,  100,  236,  238;  wheat  crops,  86. 
Great  Britain,  commercial  supremacy  of,  226 ;  cultivable  area,  43  ;  growth 

of  industries,  6;  market-gardening,  240;  land,  use  made  of,  compared 

with  France  and  Belgium,  50-58 ;  petty  trades  in,  133 ;  vegetables, 

imports  to,  240. 
Green,  Vice-Consul,  on  Russian  agricultural  machinery,  14  note. 
Greenhouse  culture,  112  seq.,  235. 
Gressent,  M.,  Potager  moderne,  64  note. 
Gros,  M.,  crops  of  beet  and  carrots,  61. 
Grove,  208. 
Guernsey,  agriculture  and  horticulture,  230^9.;  greenhouse  culture,  115, 

118. 
Guyot,  Alpine  boulders,  204  note. 

Hallett,  Major,  "  pedigree  cereals,"  95  sef. 

Ham,  Ch.  H.,  Manual  Training,  191. 

Handicraft,  methods  of  teaching,  199. 

Haute  Marne,  150. 

Hennebout,  148. 

Holland,  imports  of  vegetables  from,  to  United  Kingdom,  241. 

Hope,  Colonel,  95, 

Horticulture,  104-120. 

Hungary,  industries,  22  ;  mining,  225. 

India,  growth  of  industries,  24 ;  progress  of  cotton  manufacture,  227. 
Vidian  corn,  high  crops,  81. 


INDEX.  255 

Industries,  growth  of,  in  Austria-Hungary,  22  ;  in  Bohemia.  22  ;  in  Brazil, 
24;  in  France,  9;  in  Germany,  10,  17;  in  India,  24;  in  Italy,  23; 
in  Japan,  27;  in  Mexico,  24 ;  in  Russia,  12;  in  Spain,  24;  in  the 
United  States,  a8 ;  scattering  of,  183  ;  industries  and  agriculture, 
126  seq. 

Integrated  education,  188. 

Integration  of  labour,  5,  212. 

Invention,  its  distinctive  features,  185,  209. 

Iowa,  methods  of  farming,  78  ;  State's  fair,  Sa 

Iron  and  Steel  Institute,  19. 

Irrigated  meadows,  in  France,  93,  94;  at  Milan,  94,  229  ;  Boitel's  work, 

93- 

Issaieff,  Prof.,  combinations  of  workers,  168;  cutlery  in  Auvergne,  152; 
petty  trades  in  Germany,  162. 

Italy,  growth  of  industries,  23 ;  irrigated  meadows,  229 ;  silks,  36 ;  spin- 
ning mills,  234. 

Japan,  growth  of  industries,  27,  28;  rice  culture,  238,  240;  Dr.  Fesca's 

work,  239  note. 
Jersey,  88  seq.,  230  seq. ;    Ansted's  work,  230,   232 ;    Bear's  work  and 

papers  on,  114,  230;  climate,  230;  Falle's  work,  232;    greenhouses, 

113;  "Groans  of  Inhabitants,"  232 ;   land  laws  and  taxation,  232 ; 

Latham's  work,   230,    232 ;    potato   growing,  89 ;    Quayle's  work, 

232 ;  soil,  232 ;  speed  of  planting,  240. 
Joule,  mechanical  equivalent  of  heat,  208. 
yournal  d' Agriculture  pratique ^  93  note. 
journal  de  V Agriculture,  229. 
Journal  des  Economistes,  92  note. 
Journal  of  Horticulture^  on  grape  growing  in  England,  120 ;  on  potato 

growing  in  Jersey,  89  note. 
Journal  of  the  Royal  Agricultural  Society,  96  note,  230. 

Kent,  hop  picking,  181. 
Kerchove  de  Dcnterghen,  88  note. 
Kindergartens,  193. 
Knight,  Mr.,  heavy  potato  crops,  91. 

Lake  District,  petty  trades,  136,  139. 

Land  laws  in  Jersey,  88,  232. 

Latham,  R.  J.,  The  Channel  Islands,  230,  233-235. 

Lawes,  Sir  J.  B.,  on  crops  in  United  Kingdom,  43 ;  yearly  food,  44  note 

challenge  to  Sir  A.  Cotton,  236  seq. 
Lecouteux,  Le  hie,  76  note. 
Lee,  Mr.  Henry,  25. 
Leeds,  cloth  trade,  135. 
Leibnitz,  184. 
Leicester,  137. 

Lettuce  grown  by  electric  light,  82. 
Lille,  143. 
Linnaeus,  184. 
Liverpool  and  Bremen,  19. 
Live  stock,  area  required  to  keep  it,  61. 
Lodge  farm,  95. 

Lodging,  work  required  to  provide  it,  214, 
Lodz  (Poland),  16. 


256  INDEX. 

Lomonosoff,  mechanical  theory  of  heat,  203. 
London,  petty  trades,  138. 
Loudeac,  148. 

Luxemburg,  Grand  Duchy  of,  iron  industry,  222. 
Lyell,  204  note. 

Lyons,  silks,  156;  (?  the)  Lyons  industrial  region,  155  seq.,  appendix  O, 
242. 

Malthus,  his  doctrine,  83. 

Manchester  and  neighbouring  towns,  179. 

Manitoba,  farming,  78. 

Maraichers,  63 ;  opinion  on  replanted  wheat,  239. 

Market-gardening,  60  seq. ;  in  Belgium,  242 ;    in  France,  104 ;    in  Great 

Britain,  104,  and  appendix  M  ;  at  Roscoff,  105. 
Mark  Lane  Express,  costs  of  wheat  growing,  73  note,  74. 
Marx,  Karl,  on  concentration  of  capital,  163  note. 
Mathematics  at  Moscow  technical  school,  189. 
Mayer,  mechanical  equivalent  of  heat,  208. 
Mexico,  growth  of  industries,  24. 
Microbes,  fertilisation  of  the  soil  by,  64  note. 
Middlemen  in  England,  74,  241. 
Milan,  irrigated  meadows,  94,  229. 
Montreuil,  peaches,  106. 

Morand,  Marius,  Organisation  ouvriere  de  lafabrlque  lyonnaise,  245  note. 
Moscow,  Satistical  Committee,  173 ;  technical  school,  189. 
Murdoch,  187. 
Murray's  Dictionary,  206. 
Muslins,  at  Tarare,  157. 

Naphtha  as  fuel  in  Russia,  15. 

Nature,  on  American  iron  trade,  29  note. 

Neufchatel,  150. 

Newton,  184. 

NicoUe,  E.  Toulmin,  The  Channel  Islands,  230. 

Nievre,  150. 

Nineteenth  Century,  preface  vi.,  80  note,  96  note. 

Nogent,  cutlery,  151. 

Norman  customary  law,  233. 

I^ormandy,  agriculture,  107 ;  petty  trades,  142  seq, 

Northampton,  137. 

Norwich  and  Ipswich,  137. 

Nottingham,  lace  factories,  200. 

Oetken,  on  American  competition,  78. 

Ogilvie,  Dr.,  Gordon's  College  at  Aberdeen,  191, 

Orizaba,  cotton  mills,  24. 

Orleans  and  neighbourhood,  industries,  146. 

Over-production,  its  meaning,  31. 

Oyonnax,  comb-making,  153. 

Panissieres,  silks,  157. 

Paris,  emporium  of  petty  trades,  159 ;    market-gardening,  62-67  ;    petty 

trades,  appendix  P,  247. 
Pavlovo,  cutlery  village,  135,  178. 


INDEX.  ^57 

Petty  trades,  conclusions,  177  seq. ;  precarious  conditions  01  some  of  them, 
131 ;  transformation  and  struggles,  132 ;  variety  and  division,  128  se^. ; 
and  great  industries  in  Germany,  165  stq.,  248 ;  in  Belgium,  171 ;  in 
France,  1405^^.,  242;  in  Germany,  162-171 ;  in  Russia,  173-176;  in 
Switzerland,  171;  at  Paris,  247. 

Philadelphia  Exhibition-,  189. 

Physics,  methods  of  teaching  it,  197. 

Planted  wheat,  95  seq.,  appendix  K,  236. 

Piatt,  Mr.  James,  25. 

Ponce,  M.,  Culture  maraichire,  64  note ;  his  orchard,  65. 

Potato  growing,  by  Girard,  92 ;  by  Mr.  Knight,  91 ;  in  Germany,  92 ; 
in  Jersey,  89,  230. 

Prison  work,  149. 

Puris,  M.,  irrigation,  94  note. 

Quayle,  General  View  of  the  Agriculture  and  present  State  of  the  Islands 

on  the  Coasts  of  Normandy  y  232. 
Quenvais  (Jersey),  232. 

Rathgen,  Japan's  Volkwirthschaft,  etc.,  28  note. 

Redditch,  needles,  136, 

Rennes,  145. 

Rennie,  185,  207. 

Replanted  wheat,  102,  appendix  L,  238. 

Reuleaux,  Theoretische  Kinematik,  188. 

Reybaud,  Le  Coton,  143,  144,  157. 

Rhone,  river,  its  banks,  culture  on,  156. 

Rice  culture  in  Japan  and  China,  238. 

Risler,  Physiologie  et  Culture  du  hie,  87  note 

Rivers,  Th.,  The  Orchard  Houses,  etc.,  112. 

Roanne,  great  and  small  industries,  158. 

Robinson,  Prof.,  185. 

Rogers,  Thorold,  on  economic  interpretation  of  history,  138,  166,  205, 

Ronna,  Prof.,  Agriculture  aux  Etats  Unis,  76  note ;  Irrigations,  95  ;  rice- 
growing  in  Japan,  240. 

Roscoe,  136  note. 

Roscoff  (Brittany),  market-gardening,  105. 

Rothamsted  experiments,  44 ;  challenge  to  Sir  A.  Cotton,  236  seq. ;  size 
of  experimental  plots,  237, 

Roubaix,  cotton  weaving,  143. 

Rouen,  weaving,  144, 145. 

Rumford,  mechanical  theory  of  heat,  203. 

Russia,  cost  of  wheat  growing,  73  ;  growth  of  industries,  12  seq.,  221 ; 
decrease  of  imports,  16 ;  petty  trades :  committee  on,  173  ;  in- 
quiries made  by  the  zemstvos,  173  ;  do.,  by  the  Moscow  statistical 
committee,  173  ;  numbers  of  workers  employed  in,  173  ;  relation  to 
agriculture,  175 ;  returns,  174 ;  variety  of  produce,  174 ;  spinning 
nulls,  225. 

Saffelare  district,  agriculture,  60,  87, 

Sagnier,  H.,  on  irrigation,  94  note. 

St.  Chamond,  243. 

St.  Etienne,  industries  in,  appendix  O,  242. 

St.  H61icr,  harbour  (Jersey),  89. 

17 


25^  INDEX. 

St.  Petersburg,  182 ;  university  students  of  mathematics,  189. 
St.  Quentin,  143. 
Sainte  Claude,  briar  pipes,  154. 
Sale,  difficulty  of,  in  petty  trades,  167. 
Saunders,  W.,  breeding  of  new  cereals,  gg. 
Sax,  Em.  Hans,  petty  trades  in  Germany,  162,  i&^. 
Saxony,  spinning  mills,  225. 
Schaeffle,  on  American  competition,  78. 
SchmoUer,  jfahrbuch,  76  note,  248. 
Schonberg,  Volkwirthschaftslehre,  248. 

Schulze  Gaewernitz,  on  cotton  industry  in  Germany,  25,  169. 
Schwarz,  O.,  Forms  of  Great  Industries,  248. 
Science,  its  powers,  219;  applied  science,  208. 

Semler,  on  American  competition,  78  ;  Tropical  AgricnUure^  a^g  oote. 
Sheffield  cutlery,  134. 
Sheriff,  Mr.,  breeding  of  new  cereals,  99, 
'•  Shoddy  "  factories,  156. 
Silk  trade,  35,  appendix  O,  242. 

Simon  Eugene,  La  cite  chinoise,  239 ;  replanted  wheat,  239. 
Small  industries,  126  seq, 
Smeaton,  185,  206. 
Smiles,  Mr.,  quoted,  207. 
Smith,  Adam,  i,  167. 

Soil,  made  and  removed  when  quitting  tenancy,  64. 
South  Staffordshire,  136. 
Spain,  growth  of  industries,  24. 
Stanley,  Mr.,  34. 

Statesman's  Yearbook,  27  note,  33. 
Station  Agronomique  de  I'Est,  99,  100. 
Stephenson,  185,  206. 
Sunshine  in  Jersey  and  in  England,  230. 
Sussex,  hop  picking,  181. 
Sweating  system,  130. 
Swiss  watch  makers,  131. 

Switzerland,  income  from  tourists,  30;  petty  trades,  171;  spinning  mills, 
225. 

Tararc,  muslins,  etc.,  157. 

Taxation  of  agriculture  in  Italy,  229 ;  in  Jersey,  232. 

Telford,  207. 

Textile  Recorder,  27,  29,  227. 

Thierry,  Augustin,  205. 

Thiers,  cutlery,  151. 

Thompson,  D.,  on  grape  culture,  112. 

Thun,  A.  M.,  petty  trades  in  Germany,  162. 

Times,  96. 

Tisserand,  growth  of  population  and  wheat  crop  in  France,  86  note. 

Tomblaine,  experimental  station,  102,  236. 

Toubeau,  M.   Metric  Repartition  of  Taxes,  62  note,  64  note,  239  note  j 

planted  wheat,  239. 
ToynbeCj  Mr.,  Lectures,  138. 
Transmission  of  motive  power  for  petty  trades,  168 ;  in  Jura  hills,  154; 

156 ;  at  Paris,  i6x. 
Truck-farms  in  the  United  States,  iii. 
Turkestan  cotton,  13  note. 


INDEX.  259 

United  Kingdom,  agriculture,  43;  cattle,  45;  position  occupied  in  cotton 
industry,  34;  position  occupied  in  international  trade,  32,  226;  vege- 
tables, imports  of,  240  seg.;  wheat  crops,  43. 

United  States,  agriculture,  76 ;  efforts  to  promote  it,  79 ;  growth  of  in- 
dustries, 28;  imports  of  manure,  81;  market-gardening,  81,  no; 
State  fairs,  80;  truck-farms,  1x1. 

Unwin,  Prof.  W.,  transmission  of  motive  power  for  petty  trades,  168,  180. 

Venetz,  204  note. 

Vera  Cruz,  cotton  mills,  24. 

Verviers,  woollen  mills  and  clothiers,  132. 

Vienna,  petty  trades,  160. 

Vienne,  Isire,  shoddy  factories,  156. 

Vilmorin,  breeding  of  new  cereals,  99. 

Vineries,  in  Jersey,  114;  in  Belgium,  appendix  N,  242, 

Voigt,  Paul,  petty  trades  in  Germany,  162. 

Vorsma,  cutlery  village,  135,  176. 

Vosges,  spinning  mills,  225. 

Wages  of  agricultural  labourers  in  Russia,  74  note. 

Walsall  and  neighbourhoods,  137. 

Warsaw,  petty  trades,  160. 

Waste  of  time  in  the  schools,  193. 

Watch  makers,  in  French  Jura,  153 ;  in  Switzerland,  153. 

Waterfalls,  motive  power  of,  154. 

Watt,  James,  185,  187,  206. 

Wheat,  cost  of  growing,  71,  73  note,  74;  planted,  95,  appendix  K,  236. 

replanted,  102,  appendix  L,  238. 
Whitehead,  Charles,  Hints  on  Vegetable  and  Fruit  Farming,  104. 
Williams,  E.  E.,  Made  in  Germany,  18  note. 
Woollen  trade,  its  spreading,  35. 
Wurtemberg,  spinning  mills,  225. 

Yakutsk  barley,  99. 
Yearly  bread-food,  44,  loa 
Young,  Arthur,  144. 

Zemstvos  in  Russia,  inquiry  into  petty  trades,  73  note,  173. 


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